Celebrating the Dead

Día de los Muertos, otherwise known as Day of the Dead, is a holiday celebrated every year on Nov. 2 throughout Mexico to commemorate loved ones that have passed away.

Day of the Dead is a very festive and creative holiday. Families construct altars to honor the dead; laying out food, drinks and any special items the deceased used to own. The day is filled with many celebrations and festivals, while the nights are often spent in the cemetery next to a loved one’s burial site.

While it all may seem a bit morbid, the purpose of Day of the Dead is to make contact with the spirits and let them know they haven’t been forgotten.

“It’s kind of a spin-off of Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, but it’s just way extreme and very different from that,” Spanish teacher Melissa Sellon said.

Not only is Day of the Dead celebrated in Mexico, but it is also celebrated in Waverly High School’s Spanish classes. Sellon has many crafts for her students to design in honor of Day of the Dead which includes: papel picado, pan de muerto, candy skulls and paper skulls to color. Sellon also had her students bring a picture, food and an object of someone they love to add to the altar she had created in her classroom.

Papel picado is tissue paper that has been cut to create elegant designs that associate with Day of the Dead. In Mexico, papel picado is typically hung on string or attached to wooden dowels. The students who chose this craft had the options of a cat, a pumpkin, a skeleton head and many more designs.

There’s more than just papel picado. Skulls are definitely a big part of Day of the Dead, and they were also a big part of Sellon’s classroom. Many students chose this craft and spent their Spanish class period coloring a paper skull with markers, colored pencils and glitter. However, in Mexico, people do a lot more than just color masks. During the weeks leading up to this unique holiday, markets and shops are filled with skeletons and masks. People even paint their faces to look like skulls. Flowers like marigold, the flower of the dead, are added onto most faces and masks as well.

While most students only celebrated Day of the Dead during their Spanish class, others chose to honor this holiday a little bit more by working on a project outside of class: pan de muerto, or bread of the dead.

“Student’s had the option to create pan de muerto, which is bread of the dead, another [symbolic] thing. Basically, they put those on the altars to give to their loved ones that would be visiting them. On the top, there’s a cross skull or crossbones that symbolize death,” Sellon said.

Outside of class, students also had the option of making candy skulls. Candy skulls are placed over the home gravestone and have a name on the forehead to represent the departed soul and also honor the return of a particular spirit.

Sellon wanted all of her students to fully understand this holiday through the activities and crafts she had the students work on during class time.

“It’s important for my students to know about because it’s the biggest holiday in Mexico. Mexico is our closest Spanish speaking country, and I think students have a lot of perceptions about what they think they know about Mexico, but a lot of them are incorrect,” Sellon said.

Sellon has been doing some of these crafts ever since she started teaching three years ago and wants to continue doing them with some changes.

“Next year, we will probably physically make sugar skulls and dead bread. I’m going to keep doing them because it’s not just about being able to do art, but kids take ownership of those things when they get to choose what they want to do. They get to pick which one demonstrates Day of the Dead to them, and that’s really important. Student choice is a big deal,” Sellon said.

Day of the Dead is a holiday that can be celebrated anywhere even though it’s all the way from southern Mexico just by making bread of the dead or drawing a skull. It’s a wonderful way to celebrate the lives and many memories of those who have passed.

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