The best known is La Calavera Catrina, an artwork created by José Guadalupe Posada in the early 1900s, which has since become a folk icon.Īlthough Día de los Muertos seems somewhat grim with its focus on death, it’s actually a joyous holiday. Festival participants will often paint their faces to resemble skulls or create costumes that resemble skeletons or dead versions of significant Mexican historical or cultural figures. A rainbow variety of papel picados (elaborately cut paper banners) are strung from ceilings. So, when Catholicism was brought to Mexico, All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day collided with the original Aztec holiday and Día de los Muertos was born.Ĭustoms vary across the country, but core traditions remain the same wherever you go: people erect and decorate ofrendas (altars) with pictures and mementos of loved ones.

During All Souls’ Day, practitioners would decorate graves with flowers, wine, bread, and candles-it was believed that on these days, the dead would return to their family members and the offerings were meant to help them feel welcome. While All Saints’ Day commemorated all of the canonized saints, All Souls’ Day paid tribute to the souls of commoners.

In Europe, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day were celebrated on the first two days of November. However, when Spanish conquistadors came to the Americas in the 16th century, they brought Catholicism with them (as well as their iron will). During August, family members of the deceased would leave offerings of tools, food, and water on graves and elaborate altars to aid their dearly departed along their unearthly travels. The Nahua people believed that after death, a person had to make a journey of several years through nine arduous levels in the land of the dead to reach Mictlán, the soul’s final resting place. The festival’s roots stretch back nearly 3,000 years to the ancient traditions of Mexico and Central America’s Indigenous tribes (often grouped under the umbrella term, Nahua), primarily the Aztecs, who saw death as an ever-present part of life. What is Día de los Muertos?ĭía de los Muertos, one of the world’s most distinctive holidays, is the result of hundreds of years of intermeshing between colonial and native cultures.

In 2021, the celebration falls on a Monday and Tuesday. It’s definitely not the “Mexican version of Halloween.” In 2008, the holiday was added to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage as “a defining aspect of Mexican culture.” When is Día de los Muertos?ĭía de los Muertos is celebrated every year on November 1st and 2nd, just after Halloween in the United States. In Mexico, the annual holiday of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is celebrated to honor the lives of ancestors and to acknowledge the ever-revolving cycle of life and death. There’s more to Día de los Muertos than face paint and sugar skulls.

Dia de los muertos face paint