Over the last decade, movies like Coco or The Book of Life have introduced the Mexican tradition of Día de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, to greater, international audiences. It was even named a UNESCO World Heritage holiday all the way back in 2008. But among the colorful and flowery imagery that is produced by the holiday, the most striking is that of food.
This incredibly famed tradition is the result of the cultural amalgamation that came from the Spanish efforts to evangelize the Indigenous Mexican population into the Catholic Church. It stems from the Catholic holiday of All Saints’ Day, now celebrated on the first of November, as a day reserved to remember the people who are no longer with us. This is combined with long-standing Indigenous traditions from the pre-Hispanic era, in which bodies were wrapped in palm leaf mats and buried with their favorite foods, with the belief that they would get hungry in the afterlife, and a party was organized to lead them to the afterworld.
Every year, Mexico goes all out with the celebration, turning entire cities and cemeteries into the most artful landscapes, filled with colors, flowers, and altars dedicated to those we wish to remember. While mainly celebrated in Central and South Mexico, Día de Muertos is a celebration for the whole nation, and even though there are some regional differences in the observance of the holiday, there are some main elements that remain the focus of the day.
Streets are lined with colorful papel picado, tissue paper cut into different shapes that can represent different elements of the holiday or just any fun items you wish to include. Another relevant symbol of the time is the Cempasúchil, a bright orange marigold that is placed everywhere during the period of the year, and whose leaves are also used for decoration and have even become symbols themselves of the holiday.
Most importantly, however, is the creation of the Altar de Muertos. They are usually made by each family, either in the home or at the cemetery, and they are these bright and colorful altars displaying the photos of the dead. The altar is also known as the ofrenda, because it is where we place offerings for the dead so that they can take them back to the afterworld with them. In the tradition, Día de Muertos is the day when souls from the dead can come visit our plane of existence, and they get to enjoy the things they miss from this world once more, as they visit their living relatives.
The focal point of the ofrenda, however, is the food. The Altar is littered with different food items, some traditional like sugar skulls and Pan de Muerto, but they can get as specific as you wish, setting out someone’s favorite mole or even their favorite type of cake. Some people even offer their dead their favorite liquors or a pack of cigarettes to imbibe in.
Pan de Muerto is an emblematic item of the ofrenda, and maybe even of Mexican culture in general. The pastry consists of a brioche-like bun with an orange and anise flavor that is usually baked in a very specific shape. You first form a ball and then cover it with four or five little strands that are meant to be shaped like bones. Finally, you top it with a smaller circle that is meant to represent the skull. After being baked, the bread is coated with sugar throughout, sometimes using cinnamon sugar, although not as common. Some people even think, although it is not necessarily true or official, that this is supposed to represent the ashes of the dead. It sounds kind of morbid, but it is really tasty bread.
Next is the Calaveritas de Azúcar, which are literal blocks of sugar, hardened and shaped into skulls, and then decorated with colorful icing to create shapes along the ‘face’ of the figures, and sometimes even with metallic foil to give the structure more shape. For ancient Mesoamerican tribes, it was common to preserve the skulls of their dead to be displayed for rituals or celebrations, as they believed that death was not the end of existence, but merely a stage that we must all overcome. The representation of death in a colorful and playful way serves to show that death is not something to be feared but rather something we should embrace, as we will all go through it eventually.
The inclusion of food in the Altar is an incredibly interesting idea, because usually death is thought of as getting to leave all of our earthly belongings behind, and one of those is the need for nourishment in order to survive. Yet in Mexican culture, we look at food as something to connect us to our time on Earth, and even as a key to guide us back to this plane when we need to come back. And it is not just food in a general sense.
Having a favorite meal that you love enough to tie you to the people you love is an incredible concept. Food really is one of the best ways to connect with a person, and to have it be so important to put on the ofrenda each year is just incredible. To make the ofrenda, we are putting in time and effort to create a typically complicated, traditional meal to give to the dead, doing hard work to show that we still remember the people we loved: their likes and dislikes, and even their favorite meal.
Dia de Muertos is a celebration that encourages remembrance over forgetting. It is a tradition that goes back to roots from before even the country of Mexico was created, and it is all built around looking at death with joy, both for a life lived and a belief in a colorful afterlife. It centers happiness as the emotion we should associate with the people who’ve left and not sadness, even if it is still there. And it does it beautifully through art and food, as sensory points that can bring the people we love back to us, even if just for one night.