The Day of the Dead

I adore Mexico for a myriad of reasons, not least the hundreds of festivals and feast days – there's always a reason to feast and celebrate. In Mexico, The Day of the Dead is one of the most colourful festivals of the entire year. It coincides with our All Saints and All Souls Day in early November. Inevitably, death has played a central role in Mexican life and religion for thousands of years, but somehow it is not viewed with such finality as it is in our culture. Life and death are inseparable and reflect a dualistic view, as represented by the gods Quetzalcoatl, the God of Life and the Earth, and Mitchtlantecuhtli, the God of the Dead and the Underworld. After the conquest of Mexico in 1579, the Spaniards did their utmost to convert Mexico's indigenous people to Christianity, but instead the Christian celebrations gradually became overtaken by Mexico's ancient spirituality. On the Day of the Dead, throngs of Mexicans pour into cemeteries at midnight, carrying picnics to share with their beloved, deceased relatives and friends. Increasingly, visitors from all over the world join them to witness this beautifully macabre and ancient ritual.

In Oaxaca, a colonial city about an hour south of Mexico City by plane, the celebrations begin weeks before The Day of the Dead. The market and street stalls are piled high with sugar and chocolate skulls (calacas) decorated in brightly coloured icing. A special anise-flavoured bread, embellished with symbolic images called pan de meurtos, is baked. Figurines of painted skeletons engaged in a whole range of human behaviour – from drinking mescal, to watching TV, playing soccer, driving sports cars, or playing in mariachi bands – are snapped up by locals and tourists alike. All very morbid and macabre one might think, but in fact it all adds to the air of celebration.

In every home, altars and shrines are beautifully decorated with statues, flowers, ornate candles, food, and personal items, so that the appropriate spirit will find its way home during the special days.

Families and friends prepare their "ofrenda" (the adornment of a grave for the all-night vigil). Some people do evocative sand paintings, others construct bamboo fences around graves, which are then decorated with flowers, fruit and colourful sugar skulls and sometimes bottles of tequila and Coca Cola. Cock's combs and the marigold-like campasuchil flowers embellish the graves. The strewn petals make vibrant orange paths to the graveyard. Some Indians believe that the bright orange colour and the pungent perfume of the flowers attract the spirits, and that copal, an ancient incense burnt by the graveside and around household altars, also entices and nourishes the spirits.

In kitchens all over Mexico, women painstakingly cook the favourite foods of their loved ones. Posole and turkey mole are traditional favourites. At midnight, families enter the cemeteries laden with food, drink, flowers, candles, blankets and treasured mementoes of their lost ones. They lovingly lay baskets and pottery dishes full of tasty food on the graves for their dear departed with glasses of water to allay the thirst. Come morning, the living share the food.

The entire area is bathed in the light of a forest of candles, these guide the spirits to their waiting family and friends, who sit wrapped in blankets and ponchos around the graves. As the night moves on they tell stories and drink toasts to their loved ones. A mariachi band plays lively music, the mood seems festive but somewhat subdued.

Of course there are similarities with Hallowe'en, but our celebrations seem on one hand darker, but on the other more frivolous, as the children play trick or treat and dress up as witches, monsters, vampires and ghosts to terrorise their friends and neighbours.

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