Dia de Muertos!

             What’s up guys!!  Recently we’ve been talking about Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in class. We had a celebration last week, but first I’m going to tell you a little about the history of this holiday!

    The Day of the Dead celebration comes from the Aztecs. It has  influences from other cultures too, such as the Celtics and the Romans. The Aztecs used bones to honor their ancestors by placing them on temples and using them to “commune” with the dead. Once Spain conquered Mexico, the tradition evolved to take place on the Catholic holiday, All Saints Day. This was celebrated on November first and second. This, combined with myths and stories of the afterlife, became The Day of the Dead. It has become the celebration it is now over a span of around 6 centuries! It is now one of the most popular holidays celebrated in Mexico.

 Day of the Dead is a happy holiday and is not meant to be scary or spooky in any way! It’s a celebration of the life your ancestors lived. The natives believe it is on this night that the souls of the dead can visit the living. Bright colors and good food represent this holiday, and decorating cemeteries and ofrendas (altars to their ancestors) with both these things is necessary. Marigolds, sugar skulls and pan de muertos, a special type of bread, are seen everywhere.

 

  Now that you know a little bit more about Dia de Muertos, I’m going to write about our party we had! We had an ‘invite a friend to school day’ and did a bunch of fun activities! Beforehand we made an ofrenda with tissue paper flowers, fake fruit and some adorable paper skulls we created. Shout out to Lucy, Kensi, Char, Kutter, David, and Blake for coming! When we first got there, we rolled out some sugar cookie dough and cut out some skull shapes for our “sugar skulls”. I made the mistake of wearing black and I looked like I had walked through a storm of flour by the end! While these cooked we took a break and retreated to Emmy’s room to discuss life. The boys enjoyed playing outside doing… who knows what. Us girls frosted the cookies before the boys came back in and I must say, they looked pretty good. After that we made some pan de muertos and decorated it with colored sugar. 

 

 When the boys had finished decorating their cookies (and devouring the m) we gathered all the pillows and blankets we could find and cozied in for a showing of the Disney movie Coco

. It’s a great movie and highly entertaining! About halfway through the movie, we ate a lunch of chips and salsa/guacamole, taquitos, different kinds of Cheetos and a kind of fruit nectar juice. There was also horchata, which is Mexican hot chocolate! Not my fav, but definitely very interesting. After the movie, sadly, our celebration was over. It was so fun and another shout out to Jessica for making it all happen! I can’t wait for next year!