How Does el Día de los Muertos Work?

The Day of the Dead celebrates life by inviting the spirits of loved ones back home for feasting and fun. Learn about the history and traditions surrounding the holiday in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/holidays-other/day-dead.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Lauren Vogelbaum here. November first marks the Mexican holiday Elvia
de los Mortos, or the Day of the Dead. Although
it's celebrated around the same time of the year as Halloween,
and the two holidays share in affinity for skulls and sweets,

(00:22):
they're really very different. Halloween started as a pre Christian
Celtic festival called Sowen. The Celts had an idea that
the veil between the living and the dead grew thin
around the fall harvest, also the Celtic New Year, allowing
ghosts and ghouls to slip in. The Celts dressed up
as monsters and goblins to scare off evil spirits and

(00:44):
have a little fun in the process. A Weden Saint
Patrick brought Christianity to Ireland in the fifth century. The
Church incorporated some of the pagan traditions of Sowyn into
All Hallows Eve, observed October thirty first. The modern holiday
of Halloween was first popularized in America by Irish immigrants,
and developed from there into the spookfest we know and

(01:06):
love today. Meanwhile, a version of the Day of Dead
existed in pre Hispanic Mexico as far back as three
thousand years ago. By the fifteen hundred CE and the
reign of the Aztec Empire, this had become a massive
festival dedicated to the dead that was held during the
entire ninth month of the Aztec calendar, corresponding roughly to

(01:27):
late July early August. In as Tech mythology, the underworld
is ruled by mctec asoulat, the Lady of the Dead.
Her duty was to watch over the bones of past lives,
which were also the source of new lives on Earth.
Once a year, she would leave the underworld to check
on her living bones. The Aztecs welcomed the Lady of

(01:50):
the Dead and her husband with this month long death festival,
filled with offerings and dance, as sculptures of the couple
portray them with skeletal faces and necklaces, dangling with skulls
and severed hands. O. When the Spanish colonizers arrived in
the fifteen hundreds, they brought priests who converted indigenous peoples
by the sword. Some of the old traditions surrounding the

(02:14):
Day of the Dead got folded into Catholic observances of
All Saints Day on November first and All Souls Day
on November tecond. It's called religious syncretism when existing religious
customs and even deities are folded into a new belief system. O.
When the Aztecs and other indigenous Mexican groups fell to
the Spanish, they were forced to destroy their temples and

(02:36):
pagan idols and replace them with cathedrals and the Saints.
But the missionaries knew that a conquered people would have
an easier time accepting a new God and new traditions
if they fit into an existing religious worldview and ritual calendar.
And they saw that the locals venerated the dead, so
the Church looked for existing Christian holidays that emphasized communion

(03:00):
between the living and those beyond. All Saints Day and
November first is a time for Christians to remember and
honor fallen saints and now in heaven, and All Souls
Day November two marks the time to pray for the
souls of departed loved ones who may be trapped in
purgatory waiting for admission to Heaven. Still, some peoples held

(03:21):
tight to pre Hispanic symbols like Mctechasua and her skull necklace,
which endure today as the skeleton Sheik Katrina and brightly
painted sugar skulls. American concepts of death tend to be fearful,
and Halloween is a scary time. The spirits of the
dead are more likely to return as creepy ghosts than

(03:43):
friendly visitors. But Eldiya dels Mortos is a celebration of life,
both here and beyond, when the souls of the departed
come home for feasting and fun. The holiday's traditions help
us remember, respect and celebrate loved ones who have passed,
and they let us laugh at death while poking fun
at the living. The Mexican poet and author Octavial Pus

(04:08):
described this attitude, writing that a Mexican person quote is
familiar with death, jokes about it, caresses it, sleeps with it,
celebrates it. It is one of his favorite toys and
his steadfast love. Even the cemetery, a place that Westerners
tend to associate with mourning and fear, is tinged with laughter, music,

(04:29):
and colorful decorations on the Day of the Dead. A death,
after all, is part of the human experience. We'll get
back to the cemetery in a moment, but Day of
the Dead really starts in the home with the building
of afrandas, a type of festive altar dedicated to deceased
love ones. An afranda can be small or large, humble

(04:51):
or ornate, but ite's sure to include a picture of
the person who has passed a plus some of their
favorite foods and drinks to help them refuel after the
long journey from the spirit world. The path home is
marked by flower petals scattered on and around the altar,
a smoky incense candles, and papel piccato, a multicolored sheets
of tissue paper with elaborate designs cut into them. The

(05:14):
dominant color of afrendas is the rich orange yellow of
Mexican marigolds. In the days approaching Day of the Dead,
a flower market sell mounds of fragrant marigolds for decorating offrendas,
along with white baby's breadth and purple red cock's comb.
But in parts of Mexico where a Day of the
Dead is still traditionally observed, much of the celebration centers

(05:36):
around the local cemetery. In the days leading up to
November first, families will clean up the grave site of
a loved one. They'll pull out weeds, put a fresh
coat of paint on iron fences or white down headstones.
In humbler cemeteries, where a grave might only be marked
with a simple wooden cross, families might bring shovels and

(05:56):
mound up fresh soil over the grave. Then it's time
to decorate a graveside off brendas include lots of marigolds, candles,
and offerings of food and drink for the famished souls
of the departed. On the night of November First, families
gather around the graves. They bring food and drinks for
themselves as well as for their spirit guests. A musicians

(06:19):
take requests for loved one's favorite tunes. Families stay in
the cemetery all night, visiting with neighbors, telling stories and jokes,
and keeping the candles lit and the plates of food
full for the unseen guests of honor. A Spanish word
for skeleton is calivera, and calaveras play a large role
in Day of the Dead imagery, costumes, and art. Although

(06:43):
skeleton motifs go back to the Aztec Lady of the Dead,
a modern calivera imagery is deeply influenced by Mexican printmaker
Jose Guadalupe Posada, who gained fame in the late eighteen
hundreds drawing satirical cartoons of Mexico's wealthy elite and corrupt politicians,
all portrayed as comical skeletons. His most enduring image is

(07:05):
La Calavera Katrina from around nineteen ten. It portrays a
skeleton wearing a beautiful posh lady's hat decorated with flowers
and feathers and pretty tassels in her not hair. It's
a commentary on vanity, youth, beauty, money. You can't take
any of it with you. Today you'll find ornate clay

(07:28):
statues of colorfully painted Katrinas and her male counterpart Katrine
for sale at Day of the Dead markets, alongside smaller
figurines of Calaveras at work and play Calivera dentists, Caliverra bartenders,
Calovera footballers, etc. But there's also a second type of
Day of the Dead Calovera owen. Posado was making his

(07:50):
prints in turn of the twentieth century Mexico. Many of
his drawings adorned satirical poems called calaveras literarius literary calaveras.
These short, rhyming verses poked fun at all classes of
Mexican society and writing original colorvedos is still part of
Day of the Dead festivities for kids and grown ups. Alike.

(08:13):
Skeletons also appear as sugar skulls, bright white skulls made
of a type of sugarpaste called alfa yike. Those craft
markets have them in all sizes from tiny to life sized,
iced with colorful designs. However, though technically edible, they're meant
to be decorative, placed on afrendas or given as gifts.

(08:35):
The markets have plenty of skulls meant for snacking, though,
including chocolate skulls, lollipop skulls, and marshmallow skulls. Another holiday
treat is Pandemorthos, the bread of the Dead, available mostly
only around late October. Pandamorthos is made with a rich,
eggy dough flavored with a dash of orange blossom extract.

(08:55):
It's shaped into a round and topped with bulbous ropes
of dough shaped like crossper before being dusted with sugar
and baked. Today's episode is based on the article ten
Lively facts about the Day of the Dead on how
stuffworks dot com, written by Dave Ruse. Brain Stuff is
production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot com and

(09:17):
is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my
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