10/16/2019
DAY OF THE DEAD: so as we're gearing up for Halloween, and Day of the Dead, it's always a good time to give a little lecture about this holiday. There are people who are unhappy when Dia de los Mu***os is associated with Halloween!! Then there's a sensitivity over cultural appropriation. So I want to address both of those issues.
NOT HALLOWEEN?: To be fair, it actually *is* associated with Halloween because Halloween is part of the Western Christianity triduum of Allhallowtide: All Saints' Eve, All Saints' Day, and All Souls' Day. The Day of the Dead officially being the two days after Halloween. Halloween is a shortening of All Hallows' Eve, Hallows is another word for Saint.
The people who get cranky about Halloween being associated with The Day of the Dead images, don't like the imagery being thought of as a scary/creepy skulls and skeletons. Many feel those images are a celebration of the people they love who have passed before, a happy symbol of life and family. To not understand its importance to some people, is indeed insensitive, calling it creepy very belittling.
CULTURAL APPROPRIATION: as an amateur genealogist, this one really ticks me off. I think cultural appropriation in MANY cases is actually cultural appreciation. There is not a single custom that any of us participate in today that isn't a merging of MANY different cultures in our history. And for those VERY few that don't like a "white" lady loving Day of the Dead face painting designs, because "... it comes from the ancient Aztec ... " then I hope you're putting your brushes away on St Patrick's Day and Christmas! Besides which, The Day of the Dead, the way it is celebrated today, is a merging of MANY cultures.
Some feel it's origins are in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia. But, it is more typically linked to the Celtic festival of Samhain, which comes from the Old Irish for 'summer's end'.
The first official Christian, Catholic, celebration of All Saints Day originally took place in Rome in May about the year A.D. 610, and it was not till two hundred years after that it was changed to Nov. 1.
Now bringing us to North America. The Spanish and Portuguese brought Christianity and sugar, and with it, the celebration of All Saints Day, in the 16th century.
But, before the Spanish colonization there was an Aztec event, thought to celebrate the Dead, during the summer. The assumption is, there was a merging of this and the Christian All Saints Day, especially in the south of Mexico.
Skulls as art: People began displaying skulls as early as 7,200 B.C., in Jericho, in the Middle East. Many other cultures would take skulls and decorate them, carve them, make them into art pieces, as a celebration we assume, of loved ones who have passed.
In South America and Mexico, the ancient Zapotec and Mixteca people of Oaxaca and Puebla had a practice similar to the inhabitants of Jericho. The skulls of their ancestors were mixed with ivory, bamboo, jade, turquoise, and other minerals to show the status of the ancestors. It's easy to see how this could lead to the appreciation in that part of the world of decorating sugar to look like human skulls.
Sugar Skulls as we sometimes called the faces we paint, are based on the art done on chunks of sugar. This idea was brought over with the sugar from Italy. The sugar skulls are used to decorate altars that are made to honor the dead. Many items that the loved ones are thought to have liked are used to decorate these altars.
"Originally, the Day of the Dead as such was not celebrated in northern Mexico, where it was unknown until the 20th century because its indigenous people had different traditions." (Wikipedia)
Painting faces to look like sexy skulls: as far as the modern Day of the Dead goes, seems to be a bit newer addition to the Celebration. However, painting the face to look like a skull is certainly quite old in many tribes around the world.
https://www.ripleys.com/weird-news/skeletal-body-paint/
http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2012/01/chapter-51-art-of-of-body-painting.html?m=1
But the look we celebrate today with much of that elegant Victorian feeling, is often attributed to La Catrina.
"La Calavera Catrina ('Dapper Skeleton', 'Elegant Skull') is a 1910–1913 zinc etching by the Mexican printmaker, cartoon illustrator and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada.[1]The image depicts a female skeleton dressed only in a hat, her chapeau en attende is related to European styles of the early 20th century. She is offered as a satirical portrait of those Mexican natives who, Posada felt, were aspiring to adopt European aristocratic traditions in the pre-revolution era. She, in particular, has become an icon of the Mexican Día de Mu***os, or Day of the Dead." (Wikipedia)
In the 1960's The Day of the Dead was made into an actual holiday in Mexico. It is grown since then, its popularity spreading throughout the world. It has been re-absorbed into other deep traditions in honor of the dead by many cultures.
