day of the Dead

 

·         WHAT IS DONE DURING THE CELEBRATION:

Every year many families place offerings and altars decorated with cempasúchil flowers, chopped paper, sugar skulls, dead bread, mole or some dish that their relatives liked to whom the offering is dedicated, and as in pre-Hispanic times, incense is placed to aromatize the place.

Likewise, the festivities include decorating the tombs with flowers and often making altars on the tombstones, which in indigenous times had a great meaning because it was thought that it helped lead the souls to travel on a good path after death.

Tradition also indicates that, to facilitate the return of souls to earth, cempasuchil flower petals should be spread and candles placed tracing the path they are going to travel so that these souls do not get lost and reach their destination. In ancient times, this path led from the family home to the pantheon where their loved ones rested.

·         WHAT MAKES THIS CELEBRATION SPECIAL:

Day of the Dead, a celebration of memory and a ritual that privileges remembrance over oblivion. The Day of the Dead in the indigenous vision implies the transitory return of the souls of the deceased, who return home, to the world of the living, to live with relatives and to be nourished by the essence of the food that is offered to them in the altars placed in their honor.

In this Day of the Dead celebration, death does not represent an absence but a living presence; death is a symbol of life that materializes in the offered altar. In this sense, it is a celebration that carries great popular importance since it includes various meanings, from philosophical to material.

·         WHAT NOT TO DO DURING THE CELEBRATION

As such, there are no rules to follow, they are more family beliefs, that is, an example of this is that you should not step on the path of flowers or rob them of their sacred food.