Celebrating the Day of the Dead
The holiday celebrated as Day of the Dead in Latin America is actually observed over a two-day period: All Saints’ Day on November 1 is held in remembrance of deceased children and infants, and All Souls’ Day on November 2 commemorates deceased adults. We’ve picked some appropriate jewelry to go with this happy holiday.
For the uninitiated, the Day of the Dead is not a somber occasion, but actually a joyous one. Festivities, feasts, and parties are held to celebrate the lives of the deceased. Favorite foods of the departed are made, offered, and eaten. Photos are hung, altars are built, and friends and relatives dance and sing to celebrate their loved ones who have crossed over.
The cultural roots of the Day of the Dead explain why a typically sad event is considered a happy occasion. Indigenous peoples living in South and Central America believed that life was a dream, and that the after-death state was when we were truly alive. A poem by an unknown Pre-Columbian writer from the Nahua people (Aztecs, Chichimecas, Tlaxcaltecas, and Toltecas) beautifully expressed this:
It is not true, it is not true
That we come to live here
We came only to sleep, only to dream
The holiday celebration originated with the Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations who collected skulls as trophies, which were used in a ritual held in the month of Miccailhuitontli (our August), in accordance with the Aztec Solar Calendar. In an effort to convert indigenous peoples to Catholicism during the Spanish conquest, the ritual was adapted to Christian beliefs, and so the celebration days were changed from the beginning of August to November 1st and November 2nd, which are the Catholic holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.