Tomorrow You'll Be Older: Halloween vs Day of the Dead

   Whatever has happened to Halloween? You look up what Halloween is on Wikipedia, and you get a conglomeration of cultures with Catholic/Christian beliefs, Celtic pagan beliefs and outright devil-worshipping. And this is what we "celebrate" on Oct. 31st. I personally am a little disturbed about what Halloween has become. I think the puritans would turn in their graves to see what we have done with All Hallows Eve. To them, it was a day to remember departed souls; now we flaunt violence, gore, sorceries and immodesty.
     Ever since I was a pretty young child, I've been morbidly fascinated with and yet determined to avoid all scary parts of Halloween. I hated the sinking feeling in the gut, the inability to get enough air and the on-edge, panicky adrenaline rush that came with telling scary stories or going through my brother's homemade haunted houses. Even knowing it was all fake, and recognizing my brother and his friends: a bunch of ketchup and a plastic knife would keep me awake for nights at a time. At the age of 11, I watched a TV show about a haunted house and ended up waking my entire household at 5 AM screaming at what turned out to be my own shadow (They still tease me about that one.). In high school I almost broke up with my boyfriend at the time for pushing me toward a chainsaw guy in a haunted corn maze (I really should have followed though with that impulse...). I have never liked the feelings of fear.
   As I have tried to set my own Halloween traditions, I've tried to stick with mostly harvest themed celebrations. We've done apple bobbing, pumpkin carving and cooking and day time corn mazes. We've gone on hay rides and hiked up mountains for the fall leaves. We've also been supportive of trick-or-treating because I've liked the community interactions.

Evelyn's trick of treat costume this year: she was a bat (a cute one, not a scary one)

And there are things about cultural Halloween celebrations that I do like: I like skeletons and graveyards a lot: they remind me that life is fleeting. I also like all the fancy goblets and chandeliers covered with dust and spider webs because it brings to mind the scripture Matthew 6:19-21.
It has been a bit of a challenge balancing our Halloween celebrations with both. Then, this year I watched "The Book of Life" and everything became clear. Instead of celebrating Halloween, we were going to celebrate Dia De Los Muertos, with a Mormon kick. So I planned a family party and issued a challenge to do temple work for an ancestor sometime in the month of October.

Michael Calavera

We had the party on October 30th. (Offically, Dia de los Muertos begins on the 31st and ends today as it is associated with the triduum of Allhallowtide.) While we got our faces painted like calaveras and decorated paper mache skulls, we listened to little biography introductions of ancestors. We had a salsa bar and we broke a piñata. We folded paper tissue carnations and colored day of the dead skulls. It was really fun! I think I'm going to celebrate Day of the Dead every Halloween. Perhaps next year I'll bake some pan de muertos for trick or treaters.

Pamela Calavera

Evelyn Calavera

Miriam decorating her skull

Ester Calavera

McKaylee Calavera taking a swing at the piñata

Michael's skull is the black on and mine is the white one

This is the tribute alter. It has all 4 elements represented (sort of): Fire isrepresented by the fake little candles, wind was the streamers (we didn't cut papel picado), water was the goblet of water, and earth was the clay pot with the red flowers in it. (Technically they chould be marigolds.) We had pictures of our ancestors and some of their old belongings represented. The only thing I feel we left out that we should have had was the dead bread. I need to find a recipe for that without eggs.