I remember the “Day of the Dead” October 31^st,  with mixed feelings, as a child coming from a country where superstition and strong belief of the supernatural was a way of living, the Day of the Dead was scary. This day is celebrated in many different ways depending on where are you from, but in general they maintain the main idea, remembering and honoring our loved ones who have died.

In our home was a custom to set a little shrine with the deceased pictures, several candles and some of the favorite foods of the death since there were too many departed relatives, my mother put the night before the Day of the Dead some flowers, a big bowl with seasonal fruit, and candies.  We were told not to touch that, we as children were amazed (and scared) to see that some of the fruit and candies disappeared overnight, we wondered which spirit took it and how could they do that? As we grew up we learned that we could also snick up in the middle of the night to enjoy some of the offerings.

It was also customary to go to the cemetery on that particular day, we brought flowers, mainly yellow mums and potted marigolds, which are beautiful but have that strong aroma which was overwhelming.  The serenity and beauty of the cemetery was interrupted by so many people dressed in mourning outfits, black or gray, carrying the same yellow flowers, lots of the favorite food of their dead relatives and candles or lanterns, the tombstones were decorated very colorful, this was not scary, on the contrary it was a happy way of celebrating the life of the dead, it was more like going to a  picnic, although it was strange to see some people really crying remembering their loved ones and others laughing and hugging each other because for them it was like a family reunion.

I left my country a long time ago and I must tell you that I don’t know if this way of celebrating the Day of the Dead is still the same now days.

It was amazing on that day to see the street vendors set a table with nothing else but skulls made out of sugar, they were red, white, blue, any color you could think of, small, medium, or gigantic skulls with names written on the  forehead, small coffins, skeletons or little tombstones, you could find them also in the bakeries, the regular grocery store, anywhere, and if you wanted you could eat them because they were like hard candy.

When I grew up and I was working we used to have a small celebration at the office, each one of the workers picked up a name and we had to write a small verse that could be used in our tombstones, we used to call these poems “Calaveras” Skull poems, most of the time they were hilarious, each one would read their verse and give it to the person whose name we picked up before with a little gift of a sugar skull.  We had lots of fun.

Halloween was introduced gradually to the Mexican culture and as far as I know it is celebrated the same way as here, with trick or treat and scary costumes

Saravdw 10-27-2009