DIA DE LOS MUERTOS (Day of the Dead)

I know Tia Lee Anna knows about Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), but I thought I would share with all...

Day of the Dead is a family event to remember ancestors, whose spirits visit the earth once a year. This concept of the cycle or circle of life is a strong tradition with many native and indigenous peoples worldwide, says Heard Museum Educational Services Manager Gina Laczko said. El Día de Los Muertos is not scary. It's reflective, but not sad.

This cyclic view fused with Catholicism's All Souls Day on Nov. 2 and All Saints Day on Nov. 1 to become Day (or Days) of the Dead, Laczko explained. In a society without written family trees, celebrants tell stories to their children, "and it's not just the landmark things about your parents or great-grandparents," she added. "You remember a lot of anecdotal things, such as what was her favorite food, or that time he got me with that good practical joke."

Although many Americans see the prototypical dancing skeletons and celebration of death as macabre or related to Halloween, it's not, Laczko and others emphasize. As harvest festivals both fall at the same time of the year, but El Día de Los Muertos is not scary. It's reflective, but not sad.

What relates it to Halloween in many minds are images of cavorting skeletons. Laczko notes that these are a direct result of the work of Mexican press artist Jose Guadalupe Posada, who died in 1913. Posada inspired muralist Diego Rivera and others with his caricatures of the rich and political, all depicted as skeletons. Katarina, a skeletal figure in a plumed hat and dress, has become the instant visual signal of El Día de Los Muertos.

Katarina and company are in evidence all over Mexico as altars are set up Oct. 30 and 31. In homes, tables are covered with flowers, fruits, vegetables, candles, incense, statues of saints, photos of the deceased. The sky is represented by a sheet or strings of paper cutouts.

Traditionally, the flowers used are marigolds, and the incense used on the altar is copal, the resin from a particular tree. Like moles and chile-laced dishes prepared for some of the ancestors, the flowers are quite aromatic and the copal has a distinctive smell.

So what foods are made? "You would want to provide for (the spirits) the very best things they loved in life, the things made with the most love and the most care," Linda McAllister said. "You would make their favorite dish.

It is believed that the souls of children, los angelitos, return first on Oct. 30 and 31. Toys, not-so-spicy foods and candies would be provided on la ofrenda, or separate miniature altars might be made for them with small cups, saucers, and even miniature pan de muerto.

Families clean and repaint the graves in cemeteries, which are sometimes in churchyards, sometimes in the countryside. Musicians are often hired to play the favorite songs of the departed.

Women spend days working armloads of flowers into breathtakingly elaborate installations, she said. She was afraid she might offend people by taking photographs, so she asked a family for permission, and they were quite flattered. The family at the next gravesite said, "Don't you think ours are beautiful?"
"So there's tremendous pride," Laczko said. "Americans have no idea of how overwhelmingly beautiful this is. And to do all this work, it really is an honoring of that person."

So we'll have to learn from Johan his experiences of Dia de los Muertos while introducing him to our version of All Saints Day as well as Halloween.
-Carrie