Mexico Celebrates Day of Dead
TZINTZUNTZAN, Mexico (AP) - With traditional flower-decked altars dedicated to deceased relatives and friends, Mexicans celebrated the first of two Day of the Dead holidays Thursday, remembering those who died as children.
A second celebration Friday is traditionally held for those who died as adults.
Yellow cempasuchitl flowers - whose bright color is thought to guide the dead back to loved ones - surrounded photographs of the deceased placed near gravesides or at home altars.
At the graveyard in the largely Indian west Mexico town of Tzintzuntzan, children played among the tombs as adults decorated graves with candles and flowers.
Many residents brought small cook stoves and food, to prepare a graveside meal during their vigil at the tombs of their relatives.
Some placed trails of flower petals leading to their doors, to mark the way home for the spirits of the dead.
``Rather than a U.S.-style holiday of Halloween or witches, this is a nostalgic commemoration for our dear departed,'' columnist David Fernandez Hummel wrote for the government news agency Notimex.
The tradition appears rooted in pre-Hispanic beliefs that life is brief and transitory, and that the spirits of the dead went neither to a paradise or hell, but wandered for years before entering Mictlan, the ``land of the dead.''
The dead were indeed present Thursday. In front of their photographs, relatives placed candles, ``dead bread'' pastry, and the favorite food and drink of the deceased, to give them a warm welcome.
Traditions vary throughout Mexico, reflecting customs inherited from the country's 62 Indian groups.
In southern Mexico, relatives burn copal incense over the altars, and in some communities people light bonfires in the doorways of their houses to guide the dead home. Some families mount all-night vigils at gravesides to ``chat'' with their departed loved ones; others arrange an afternoon meal at graveside.
Some bring guitars and hold a graveside serenade, singing the favorite songs of the deceased.
Among Chamula Indians in Chiapas, the holiday includes a new period of mourning - no matter how long ago a relative died - and a ritual of cleaning all the roads and fresh water springs in the area, to guarantee the dead a comfortable journey.
In one Maya Indian town in the southern state of Campeche, residents use the holiday to clean the previously buried and disinterred bones of their relatives, and place fresh cotton cloths in boxes where the bones are stored at graveyards.
Originally published November 01, 2001.
