Da de los Muertos vs' Halloween

1
Día de los Muertosvs.Halloween

• Cual es la diferencia?

2
Qué es Diá de los Muertos?

• More than 500 years ago, when the Spanish
  Conquistadors landed in what is now Mexico, they
  encountered natives practicing a ritual that
  seemed to mock death. It was a ritual the
  indigenous people had been practicing at least
  3,000 years. A ritual the Spaniards would try
  unsuccessfully to eradicate. This ritual is known
  today as Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead.

3
Origins continued

• The ritual is celebrated in Mexico and certain
  parts of the United States, including the Valley.
• Today, people don wooden skull masks called
  calacas and dance in honor of their deceased
  relatives. The wooden skulls are also placed on
  altars that are dedicated to the dead. Sugar
  skulls, made with the names of the dead person on
  the forehead, are eaten by a relative or friend

4
Las Calacas

• The Aztecs and other Meso-American civilizations
  kept skulls as trophies and displayed them during
  the ritual. The skulls were used to symbolize
  death and rebirth. The skulls were used to honor
  the dead, whom the Aztecs and other Meso-American
  civilizations believed came back to visit during
  the month long ritual.

5
Death is only the beginning..

• Unlike the Spaniards, who viewed death as the end
  of life, the natives viewed it as the
  continuation of life. Instead of fearing death,
  they embraced it. To them, life was a dream and
  only in death did they become truly awake.
• However, the Spaniards considered the ritual to
  be sacrilegious. They perceived the indigenous
  people to be barbaric and pagan. In their
  attempts to convert them to Catholicism, the
  Spaniards tried to kill the ritual. But like the
  old Aztec spirits, the ritual refused to die.

6
Cuándo se celebra?

• In rural Mexico, people visit the cemetery where
  their loved ones are buried. They decorate
  gravesites with marigold flowers and candles.
  They bring toys for dead children and bottles of
  tequila to adults. They sit on picnic blankets
  next to gravesites and eat the favorite food of
  their loved ones.In Guadalupe, the ritual is
  celebrated much like it is in rural Mexico."Here
  the people spend the day in the cemetery," said
  Esther Cota, the parish secretary at the Our Lady
  of Guadalupe Church. "The graves are decorated
  real pretty by the people."

7
Cómo se celebra?

• It is generally believed that the souls of one's
  family return home to join in the Day of the Dead
  festivities. First those who died in infancy come
  home, then the older children, and finally those
  who died once they'd reached adulthood. Families
  set up altars (or ofrendas) in their homes,
  festively decorated in bright colors and laden
  with the favorite foods of their dead. Typically,
  the altars contain photographs of the dead,
  representations of things they liked, and items
  representing the four elements candles for fire,
  drinks for water, fruit for earth, and fluttering
  tissue-paper decorations for wind. The dead take
  in the essence of the food, which will later be
  eaten by the living. In some areas, families go
  to the graveyard to celebrate through the night.
  They clean and decorate the graves, sometimes
  setting up ofrendas on the gravestones, as bells
  are rung.

8
Skeleton Decorations

• The major feature of Day of the Dead decorations
  is skeletons, or calacas. Skeletons are
  everywhere, from tissue-paper scenes to tiny
  plastic toys, from cardboard puppets to ceramic
  sculptures, from posters to papier mache. These
  skeletons are usually cheerful, and they are
  designed to show the full range of activities and
  professions people perform. Farmers, barbers,
  secretaries, fire fighters... if somebody does it
  while alive, you can find an artistic rendering
  of a skeleton doing it while dead. This theme
  extends to the day's food and treats. The Day of
  the Dead feast typically includes a special
  egg-batter "bread of the dead," pan de muerto.
  While the form of this bread is different from
  region to region, it is often decorated with
  strips of dough resembling bones, or made to
  resemble a dead body. Also common are skulls and
  skeletons made of sugar or candy. Some people get
  sugar skulls made to resemble themselves, or with
  their names inscribed on them.

9
Tone of the holiday

• On Day of the Dead, the focus isn't on impersonal
  threatening spooks, it's on celebrating with
  one's familyalive and deadand remembering those
  who are no longer alive. It's on seeing death as
  another stage following life, not something to be
  faced with fear.

10

• Halloween began, in ages past, as a simple
  harvest holiday a celebration of a bountiful
  year, and a hope that the year yet born would be
  at least as productive as the one past.

11
Beginnings of Halloween

• Halloween we celebrate today is a curious
  combination of the old and the new. Its roots are
  ancient, beginning with traditions celebrated by
  the pre-Christian Celts who once inhabited the
  British Isles. The ancient Celts divided the year
  into two parts Beltane, the growing season, and
  Samhain, which literally means "summer's end."
  Samhain (pronounced "Sow-en") was a time for
  celebration, a final feast in defiance of
  winter's hardships. Back then, it mostly involved
  eating a lot, cleaning the household,
  extinguishing the hearth fires and restarting
  them in a gesture of renewal, commemorating those
  who had passed away during the year, and dancing
  around a communal bonfire.

12
Created by Christians

• The Halloween we know today is actually a
  Christian creation. It all started in the 800s,
  when the Catholic Church merged two existing
  Roman festivals called Feralia and Pomona's Day
  with Samhain, in a successful attempt to replace
  all three. Pomona's Day was originally a harvest
  festival in honor of the Roman goddess of fruits
  and trees this may explain the tradition of
  bobbing for apples. Feralia was a day for
  mourning and remembering the dead.

13
All Saints/Souls Day

• Christians began celebrating All Saints Day on
  November 1, with observances beginning at sunset
  the night before. Among other things, people
  dressed in costumes as Christian saints to scare
  away evil spirits, and then went door-to-door,
  begging for food. Sound familiar? Later on All
  Soul's Day (a holiday commemorating the dead who
  were not saints) was added to the mix on November
  2. Celebrants took to going from house to house
  asking for little soul cakes (currant buns) in
  exchange for praying for the souls of a
  household's dead.By 1500 AD, All Saints and All
  Soul's Days had evolved into Hallow Time (October
  31-November 2), with most of the celebrations
  occurring the night before All Hallows Day -- All
  Hallows Eve. It wasn't long before "All Hallows
  Eve" evolved into "Hallowe'en."

14
The celebrations today

• Now fast forward to today and the celebrations
  many of us participate in. Adults have Halloween
  parties and purchase bloody decorations and other
  creepy toys

15

• Traditional kiddie Halloween parties include
  comic-scary decorations, spook houses and candy
  galore. You can get the cutest Halloween party
  invitations with matching return address labels.
  Trick-or-treating, dressing in costumes, honoring
  the dead and celebrating the good that's come to
  you during the year all these are living,
  breathing traditions that tie us to ancestors who
  lived hundreds and thousands of years ago.
  Underneath all our fun traditions, Halloween
  remains what it always was a celebration of a
  year drawing to a close, and a joyous laugh in
  the face of the winter to come.