![]() ![]() Andrade, a journalist and author of eight books about the Day of the Dead. “People are really dead when you forget about them, and if you think about them, they are alive in your mind, they are alive in your heart,” says Mary J. Bands perform and people dance to please the visiting souls. On the night of November 2, they take food to the cemetery to attract the spirits and to share in a community celebration. In Mexico, families clean the graves at cemeteries, preparing for the spirit to come. Some families also include a Christian crucifix or an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint in the altar. ![]() Altars include all four elements of life: water, the food for earth, the candle for fire, and for wind, papel picado, colorful tissue paper folk art with cut out designs to stream across the altar or the wall. Clay molded sugar skulls are painted and decorated with feathers, foil and icing, with the name of the deceased written across the foreheads. Offerings of tamales, chiles, water, tequila and pan de muerto, a specific bread for the occasion, are lined up by bright orange or yellow cempasúchil flowers, marigolds, whose strong scent helps guide the souls home.Ĭopal incense, used for ceremonies back in ancient times, is lit to draw in the spirits. Families read letters and poems and tell anecdotes and jokes about the dead. Candles light photos of the deceased and items left behind. In these ceremonies, people build altars in their homes with ofrendas, offerings to their loved ones’ souls. READ MORE: How the Early Catholic Church Christianized Halloween Day of the Dead Traditionsįamilies decorate a relative's grave with flowers at a cemetery in Tzintzuntzan, Michoacan State, Mexico on November 1, 2015. The same happened on November 1 to honor children who had died. In what became known as Día de Muertos on November 2, the Latin American indigenous traditions and symbols to honor the dead fused with non-official Catholic practices and notions of an afterlife. ![]() Once the Spanish conquered the Aztec empire in the 16 th century, the Catholic Church moved indigenous celebrations and rituals honoring the dead throughout the year to the Catholic dates commemorating All Saints Day and All Souls Day on November 1 and 2. Skulls, like the ones once placed on Aztec temples, remain a key symbol in a tradition that has continued for more than six centuries in the annual celebration to honor and commune with those who have passed on. The Aztecs used skulls to honor the dead a millennium before the Day of the Dead celebrations emerged. It's just part of the same thing.The Day of the Dead or Día de Muertos is an ever-evolving holiday that traces its earliest roots to the Aztec people in what is now central Mexico. It's a way of understanding death as a part of life. "But certainly it is at the heart of it, at the core of it, it is providing this idea of life and death and just sort of a celebration of life. "It's not as beautiful as having children walk through the museum galleries and hearing their reactions," he says. Moreno says that despite the show being entirely virtual, the tours are from all over the country, which feels, in a way, that they've "reached a little bit further." The pandemic has had an outsize impact on Latinx people in the United States, who are hospitalized from COVID-19 at four times the rate of white Americans. This year, though, like so many other celebrations, the coronavirus pandemic has thwarted the way Día de los Muertos can be celebrated. It's really important that we keep saying their names, we keep telling their stories, and we pass these ideas on to the next generation." You also put their photographs out, you share stories about them, and it really becomes a time to memorialize these individuals. "So if somebody had a specific food that they liked, you would place that out on the altar as an ofrenda. "We remember them by remembering what they enjoyed while they were here on Earth," Moreno says. Michael Tropea/National Museum of Mexican Art Sin título (Untitled) by Alfonso Castillo Orta (1944-2009) of Izúcar de Matamoros, Mexico, undated, polychrome ceramic and wire. ![]()
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