By Susan Dickson
Staff Writer
This weekend, as local trick-or-treaters take to the streets for Halloween, skeletons will be deployed as scary decorations and costumes. Meanwhile, in Mexico, skeletons will be dressed up in colorful clothing, given instruments or other props and posed in funny positions.
Colorful, dancing skeletons and skulls are some of the symbols of the Day of the Dead, or DÃa de los Muertos, a holiday celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2 in Mexico and in Mexican households in the United States. All Saints Day, a similar holiday celebrated all over the world, also celebrates the lives of those who have passed, “but not the way that they’re celebrated in Mexico,†said Sharon Mújica, a teacher at the CHICLE Language Institute in Car Mill Mall, who gave a talk about Day of the Dead at the institute on Sunday.
The holiday has roots in Aztec traditions and ties to Monarch butterflies, which typically arrive in Mexico around the first of November and were believed to represent the souls of the dead.
For the holiday, families assemble altars in their homes to honor the dead
and attract the spirits. Traditional Day of the Dead bread is often used in the altars, as are cempasuchil flowers, calaveras, or skulls, candles, photos and the favorite foods and drinks of those who have passed away.
“You want to be sure that [the spirits] are well taken care of,†Mújica said.
On the evening of Nov. 2, families go to cemeteries, where they sit on the graves of their loved ones, “and they have a party,†Mújica said, eating the foods they’d placed on the altars they’d assembled.
“People said they like to be with others to remember someone they loved,†Mújica said. “We don’t have much space for that in our society.â€
