After a fun day of costume making and celebrating Halloween we have spent the last two days celebrating and learning about the Mexican tradition of "Dia de los Muertos." These are pictures from one of the houses that we visited on Saturday night. We went to a small town close to Cuernavaca where the people celebrate Day of the Dead in a traditional manner. Anyone and everyone is invited to enter the houses where you can see the alter that the family has created for their deceased loved ones. After viewing the alter the family offers you food and drinks (inculding wine, cerveza, and tequila). To the families it is an honor to serve you food and drinks to honor and remember the people who have died. As you can see in the pictures, the families elaborately decorate the alters and spare no expense in doing so.
One of the increbile things about this whole celebration is that these families don't have very much money and they save their money all year long for a celebration that lasts only 2 days. An alter like the one pictured above would cost about $300 to put together. It would cost about $700 to $1,000 to feed all the people that come through the house as well. I can only imagine the sacrifices that these families make throughout the year so that they can honor their loved ones in a proper manner.
I don't even think these pictures can begin to explain how beautiful these alters are. You can tell that these people were loved very much. The amazing thing about this whole celebration is that the people aren't sad. There are no tears or sad faces becuase everyone is happy to celebrate the life of the people they love. They believe that on this day their loved ones come down to the alters to eat the food and drink the drinks, so they are happy to be in the presence of the spirits. I was blown away by how welcoming and warm all the people were. It was clear that we weren't some of their neighbors coming to visit and still they welcomed us with open arms and spoke with us about their loved ones. I hope the pictures do justice to all the hard work the families put into the alters.
No comments:
Post a Comment