From Deseret News archives:
Day of the Dead: More spiritual than spooky
It blends a celebration of life with trappings of funeral
Halloween, though based on a religious celebration, is now a secular holiday filled with fun and games. It's all about pretending and living it up.
The Day of the Dead also has religious roots that run back to All Saints Day (today). But it has its religious trappings and especially in Mexico has become a rich and profound commentary on the Mexican soul.
Halloween skims along the surface.
The Day of the Dead mines the deepest feelings and fears of a race.
Halloween is what Americans do.
The Day of the Dead is what Mexicans are.
Each year, on Nov. 1 (and often Nov. 2) the Mexican people here and abroad meet as families and friends to pray and talk about those who've passed on. Some will build homemade altars to honor their ancestors.
The roots of the day run back to Aztec, Mixtec and Maya times, with the Christian holidays superimposed on top of those early traditions. Some claim the early celebrations for the dead may be as much as 3,000 years old pre-dating Christ by 1,000 years.
But then that is the mystique of the Mexican personality. The people have a knack for blending opposites for weaving life and death together, for instance. They feel happy-sorrowful, bold and shy, regal and abandoned.
Writing about the Day of the Dead in "The Labyrinth of Solitude," a renowned study of the Mexican character, Mexican Nobel laureate Octavio Paz says:
"We decorate our houses with death heads, we eat bread in the shape of bones on the Day of the Dead. We love the songs and stories in which death laughs and cracks jokes."
He concludes:
"Mexican death is the mirror of Mexican life ... A civilization that denies death ends by denying life."
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