The Day of the Dead, falling on All Souls' Day in the Judeo-Christian calendar, has ancient roots in both Aztec and Druidic cultures, and refuses to fade away.
In Hungary, families spend All Hallows’ Eve in the cemetery with flowers and wreaths for the ghosts of their loved ones. The elaborate Oaxacan celebration meets the Celtic and Roman in the United States, where children go trick-or-treating, Latino immigrants have civic and social festivities around re-creations of faraway family graveyards, and Catholics observe the Feast of All Saints, all around November first.
In Mexico the traditions vary by region, but generally celebrants prepare altars in their homes with flowers, candles, mementos, and offerings for the dead, who every year return to their loved ones for one night. For weeks in advance, people make their preparations of special pastries, confections, even tequila and cigarettes, whatever their muertos might enjoy. To help the dead find their way home, the paths are strewn with flowers. After ten o'clock some villages have house-to-house collections of treats for those among the dead who have no-one to remember them. In other towns, families allow their dead first choice of the offerings during the night of November 1; then on November 2, the celebrants make a feast of the offerings of which the dead did not themselves partake.
It is a joyful celebration which accepts death as commonplace, and reassures us that we will be remembered with love and generosity after we are gone.
In Hungary, families spend All Hallows’ Eve in the cemetery with flowers and wreaths for the ghosts of their loved ones. The elaborate Oaxacan celebration meets the Celtic and Roman in the United States, where children go trick-or-treating, Latino immigrants have civic and social festivities around re-creations of faraway family graveyards, and Catholics observe the Feast of All Saints, all around November first.
In Mexico the traditions vary by region, but generally celebrants prepare altars in their homes with flowers, candles, mementos, and offerings for the dead, who every year return to their loved ones for one night. For weeks in advance, people make their preparations of special pastries, confections, even tequila and cigarettes, whatever their muertos might enjoy. To help the dead find their way home, the paths are strewn with flowers. After ten o'clock some villages have house-to-house collections of treats for those among the dead who have no-one to remember them. In other towns, families allow their dead first choice of the offerings during the night of November 1; then on November 2, the celebrants make a feast of the offerings of which the dead did not themselves partake.
It is a joyful celebration which accepts death as commonplace, and reassures us that we will be remembered with love and generosity after we are gone.