A welcome, not a fright
The Day of the Dead, Día de los Muertos, is celebrated in MEXICO on 1 and 2 November. Families believe that the SPIRITS of those who have died return to visit, and they prepare to welcome them. On 1 November many remember children who have died, and on 2 November adults. It is a time for MEMORY and celebration, not for fear, and it is quite different from Halloween, even though the dates are close.
The festival blends two TRADITION threads. The Aztecs and other peoples of Mexico held festivals for the dead long before Europeans arrived, some honouring a goddess who watched over the bones of the dead. After the Spanish conquest, the celebrations were moved to line up with the Catholic days of All Saints and All Souls. In 2008 the festival was added to the United Nations list of the world's cultural heritage.
The ofrenda
At the heart of the festival is the OFRENDA, an ALTAR set up at home or on a grave. Families place PHOTOS of their loved ones on it, with the foods and drinks they enjoyed, a glass of water for spirits thirsty after their long journey, a sweet bread called pan de muerto, and a CANDLE for each person remembered. Orange MARIGOLD flowers, called cempasúchil, are everywhere, and PETALS are scattered in paths from the street to the altar, because their bright colour and strong scent are believed to guide the spirits home.
Many families spend the night in the cemetery, cleaning and decorating the graves of each ANCESTOR, sharing food, telling stories and listening to MARIACHI musicians. The Pixar film Coco, set during the festival, is covered on our Pixar page.
A skeleton in a fancy hat
The most famous SKELETON of the festival, La CATRINA, began as a joke. Around 1910, the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada made a print of a female skeleton wearing an enormous feathered hat, poking fun at wealthy Mexicans who copied European fashions and forgot their own roots; the point was that everyone ends up the same underneath. In 1947 the painter Diego Rivera put her, in a long dress, at the centre of a huge mural in Mexico City, and she became the festival's symbol.
Today many people dress as Catrinas, in a COSTUME with FACE PAINT of a SKULL. Mexico City's big parade is surprisingly new: it was inspired by the opening scene of the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, which invented a Day of the Dead parade, and the city held a real one the following year.
Sugar skulls
A SUGAR SKULL, or CALAVERA, is moulded from sugar and decorated with bright icing, often with the name of a person being remembered written across the forehead. The technique came to Mexico with Italian missionaries in the 1600s, and Mexico had plenty of sugar but little money for imported decorations. Short, funny poems called calaveras are also written, imagining living people, often politicians, meeting Death. Strings of papel picado, tissue paper cut into lacy patterns, flutter above the altars and streets. The whole FESTIVAL is a way to REMEMBER, every NOVEMBER.