A Fun Way to Celebrate Our Dead by da-AL

Posted on by da-AL

Happy Day of the Dead, Dia de los Muertos!

161030diademuertosw6 161030diademuertosw5 161030diademuertosw4I’ve long admired how Mexicans and Chicanos make the afterlife look amazing; creative, fun, and profound — all at the same time! A dear friend recently visited Peru and returned with this “Calavera Catrina/Lady of the Dead” for me.

161030diademuertosc2My gaze riveted to Catrina’s fun feet, I asked, “What? This is from Peru?!” My friend’s answer took a while to sink in. Dia de los Muertos, it turns out, is celebrated all over the world. Not just in Mexico and Los Angeles!

Here’s a quick definition about how it’s celebrated in Mexico, lifted from a longer Wikipedia explanation.

On October 31, All Hallows Eve, the children make a children’s altar to invite the angelitos (spirits of dead children) to come back for a visit. November 1 is All Saints Day, and the adult spirits will come to visit. November 2 is All Souls Day, when families go to the cemetery to decorate the graves and tombs of their relatives. The three-day fiesta is filled with marigolds, the flowers of the dead; muertos (the bread of the dead); sugar skulls; cardboard skeletons; tissue paper decorations; fruit and nuts; incense, and other traditional foods and decorations.

— Frances Ann Day, Latina and Latino Voices in Literature

Here’s how its celebrated around Los Angeles’ oldest neighborhood, Olvera Street…

Published by da-AL

Happiness Between Tails blog/podcast speaks to and from the heart. It connects lovers — of pets, authors, reading — and of my still-unreleased novels. “Flamenco + the Sitting Cat” and “Tango + the Sitting Cat,” are my love letters to all who fear they're too odd, too damaged, too old, too whatever to find love and happiness with or without a partner. HappinessBetweenTails.com • ContactdaAL@gmail.com • BuyMeACoffee.com/SupportHBT

24 thoughts on “A Fun Way to Celebrate Our Dead by da-AL”

  3. Awww, this sounds amazing… informative for me i was not aware of this kind of celebration happening in world ;)… i love this kind of posts in which i discover new cultures and things 🙂

    Liked by 2 people

            1. I am utterly frustrated with post – am trying to work on it – without boring anyone with details, I am signed on but have yet to use it.

              Hopefully will soon have it figured out.

              Liked by 1 person

      1. Well, in China they have the Ghost Festival and in Japan they have O-bon when the ghosts come back to the world of the living. It’s not really a scary like Halloween, though, because the spirits of dead ancestors return. 😀

        Liked by 2 people

          1. It’s not as colorful and noisy and people don’t usually dress up as ghosts, skeletons or anything like that. But in the idea of the spirits of the deceased coming back to the world of the living and this being a positive rather than a frightening thing, there’s some similarity, I think.

            Liked by 1 person

  7. Over here nothing! Ok, there are just four big houses/buildings here, but there are living about 12 families in it and if I counted right 10 children. It was dark and silent last night. If we still live here next year, I think I go around the doors myself hahaha

    Liked by 3 people

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