23 Dia de Muertos
In Mexico, every Nov.2nd, ”El Dia de Muertos” (“The Day of the Dead”) is a celebration of Mexico’s traditional holiday honoringdeparted ancestors, friends, and family. Weeks before, many prepare for the multi-day festival. It begins with a journeyto the cemetery to
spruce up neglected grave sites.
Everyone is preparing specialty foods and decorations. The marketplace is lively selling “pan de muerto” (bread of the dead), sugar candies in the shapes of skulls, and papier machet masks. In homes, family alters are lovingly assembled as offerings to their deceased with foods and items that person enjoyed while alive, such as Coca Cola,cigarettes, whisky, tamales, and the traditional orange colored marigold flowers. Public squares, businesses, and schools build ofrendas -alters to public figures such as political revolutionaries, celebrities, and artists, who have passed away. These ofrendas lit up at night with their many candles create a somber and beautiful glow throughout the town at night.
Craftsmen have made unique figurines, intricate skeleton toys to decorate homes and graves. Depicting scenes of everyday life, comical and irreverent remembering not to take life too seriously. The Days of the Dead are celebrated with a mixture of reverence for the departed, and mockery to defy the fear of death itself. There is music and dancing as masked townspeople take to the streets. And finally, the peaceful vigil as friends and families crowd the cemetary filled with candles and flowers, to receive and commune with the spirits of their loved ones through the nigt to sunrise. Traditionally, All Saints Day on Nov.1, was established as the time to pray for the souls of dead children; All Sould Day, Nov.2, became the day to remember the adults.
