¶ … Dead (Dia de Muertos) is a Mexican holiday that is also celebrated around the world in other countries where Hispanics are located, such as North America, Brazil, Spain, etc. Its roots are located both in the Roman Catholic observance of All Saints and All Souls Days in November and in the pagan customs of the Aztecs who celebrated worship of the Mictecacihuatl, the Queen of the Underworld. In recent times the Day of the Dead has taken on a more nationalistic meaning than the traditional associations of spirituality (Masses and prayers offered for the dead) of Roman Catholicism. In fact, Day of the Dead celebrations were unheard of in Mexico before the 1900s. Prior to the Revolution of the early 20th century, much of Mexico celebrated only the Catholic All Saints and All Souls Days and resisted any celebration by nationalistic or pagan sects of the Day of the Dead, which they viewed as syncretistic (a mixture of pagan and Catholic celebrations). However, once the revolutionaries defeated the Cristeros in Mexico in the first half of the 20th century, the new Mexican government made the Day of the Dead a national holiday and began a public policy of spreading it in schools (Lee, 2002). Thus, Day of the Dead is culturally a product of the revolutionary government which came to power in Mexico in the 20th century and its purpose is to promote a syncretistic form of worship (Day 2003). This promotion became especially powerful after the Second Vatican Council when the Roman Catholic Church began promoting more nationalistic and syncretistic forms of worship as well.
Origins
According to Miller (2005), it was the indigenous people of Mexico who supported the Day of the Dead, as it was said to be tradition among the natives of the land in pre-Columbian times. Before the Day of the Dead was brought back through government initiatives in the 20th century, it was celebrated around August, or in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar. And it did not last just a single day but rather for an entire month. The reason it was celebrated in honor of Mictecacihuatl was because it was said that the goddess died at birth. Thus, just as the Aztecs used skulls in their rituals, the celebration of the Day of the Dead incorporated skull imagery. Today, children make sugar skulls and other treats and decorate gravesites in honor of deceased loved ones.
The Roman Catholic tradition, which is partly incorporated in the Day of the Dead festivities, encourages families to visit graveyards of loved ones where they might offer prayers. A priest would go as well and offer canonical prayers in a ritual. In fact, the whole of November came to be known as Poor Souls month in which Catholics would dedicate the entire month to offering works of prayers and penance for poor souls in Purgatory, who were waiting to be released to go to Heaven. Catholics believed that by praying for them and doing penance the souls could be released from their temporal punishment sooner than later. In the Day of the Dead celebration, this graveyard visit is still customary but it has taken on a more festive demeanor: families decorate the graves and leave the dead one's favorite snacks and foods at the grave as a remembrance. The focus is less on the soul of the person and prayer for that soul and more on the life of that person and what they liked on earth. This shift is a product of the syncretism that was promoted by both government and Church in the 1960s as well as by the renewal of an ancient pagan faith.
Celebration
Another ritual of celebrators of Day of the Dead is that they construct homemade altars for their houses and decorate them festively with candles, flowers, pictures of loved ones, and they also place the dead one's favorite foods and drinks on it to make the altar more personal and to show that the living ones on earth still remember the dead (Kanellos, 1994, p. 333). These altars can be constructed in an hour using the stalks of sugar cane. These canes can be tied to the legs of a table and, extending upward over the table, serve as support beams for an arch that can be attached, transforming an ordinary household table into an altar. The arch is a symbol of the gateway to death from life. Catholic altars in the Old World typically held a tabernacle, wherein...
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