Día de los Muertos
Honor deceased relatives
Día de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday honoring deceased loved ones, celebrated primarily on November 1st and 2nd.
Families build altars with photographs, marigolds, candles, and favorite foods of the dead, and visit cemeteries to clean and decorate graves.
The celebration blends Indigenous Mesoamerican traditions with Catholic All Saints' and All Souls' Days.
Despite the skulls and skeletons, it's festive rather than morbid—a reunion with ancestors, not a mourning of them.
- Aztec mythologyPre-Columbian Mexican religion
- sugar skullDecorative confection honoring deceased
- remembranceAct of holding something in mind
- loved onesCherished people in life
- marigoldOrange-petaled garden annual
altar · incense · flowers · candle lighting · copal · syncretism · spirit world · calavera · La Catrina · monarch butterflies · photographs · Spanish colonization · joy · graves · family gathering · celebration · cultural festivals · procession
Día de los MuertosVictorian mourning
Nineteenth-century death rituals
lamentation · dirge · keening · fear of death · funeral
Día de los Muertosexorcism
Ritual to expel demons
séance · Halloween · haunting · letting go · moving on
Día de los Muertosbirth celebration
Event honoring new life
baby shower · christening · bris · naming ceremony · birthday