Yesterday we made sugar skulls in my daughter’s class, to celebrate Day of the Dead. Not too many folks know about the holiday here in Walla Walla, but in Los Angeles it was a big deal.
All of the dual language classes in our school would build altars to honor friends and relatives who had passed away. We would make sugar skulls, children would bring pictures of loved ones, flowers and sweet breads to decorate the altars, and each class would proudly show off their altars to the other classes.
Feliz Dia de los Muertos! Those who have passed away have not been forgotten and will always be in our hearts.
Dia de los Muertos became my favorite holiday a few years ago when I was unable to travel to attend my Grandma’s memorial service. I decided to get myself to a church to find sacred space for mourning and remembrance.
I chose a Unitarian Universalist church, and lo and behold – they were celebrating Day of The Dead that Sunday, complete with altar and ofrendas.
My husband and I peeped in on a Dia de los Muertos celebration down in Copper Canyon on our honeymoon years before my church experience, and it was beautiful and festive – not a thing like mourning; it was simply partying with dear departed ones, offering them a chance to partake of earthly pleasures this one night a year when the veil between this world and the next thins to a soul-permeable membrane: musicians; chicharones; children playing soccer; giant floral arrangements; thousands of candles; and turkey vultures wobbling patient circles in the narrow dusky strip of sky between the canyon rims – 7,000 feet above us.
I’ve always struggled with my ambivalence surrounding the fine line between multiculturalism and cultural misappropriation. But for this one holiday, my self-recursive misgivings melted away after reflecting on the reverent fusion of spiritual traditions I found in church – alongside the blended evolutionary history of El Dia de los Muertos itself, from Celtic pagan to European Catholic to its ultimate mestizo expression in Mexico (from thence to the my UU church in Olympia, WA).
I would love to make sugar skulls next year!! And find someone to show me how to make tissue paper flowers – I know I made these in elementary school, but for the life of me can’t remember how to make them.
I would love to have you join us next year at the school, making sugar skulls. The beautiful people at our old school in Los Angeles also taught us how to make paper flowers, so we can make those as well.
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