is a Mexican holiday celebrated throughout Mexico and around the world in other cultures. The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. It is particularly celebrated in Mexico where the day is a bank holiday. Traditions connected with the holiday include building private altars called ofrendas, honoring the deceased using sugar skulls, marigolds, and the favorite foods and beverages of the departed, and visiting graves with these as gifts.
1 & 2 November. Mexico’s ’Day of the Dead’ does not pay homage to filmmaker George Romero – rather, it’s a two-day festival celebrating the reunion of relatives with their dear departed. Expect colourful costumes, loads of food and drink, skeletons on stilts, parties in cemeteries, skull-shaped lollies and mariachi bands performing next to graves. This beautiful, moving spectacle will demystify your fear of crossing over, because – unlike Halloween’s witches and all-round terror – the Day of the Dead smashes the taboos surrounding death, celebrating the continuation of life beyond and the value of interdimensional communion.
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