MEXICO'S "DIA DE MUERTOS"

Day of the Dead  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 (National) holiday.  The celebration takes place on October 31, November 1 and November 2,  Given the Hispanic population in South Texas, Dia de Muertos is celebrated in widespread fashion in the region.

La Calavera Catrina (or the Elegant Skull)

 La Catrina has become the referential image of Death in Mexico, it is common to see her embodied as part of the celebrations of Day of the Dead throughout the country; she has become a motive for the creation of handcrafts made from clay or other materials; her representations may vary, as above or as some of the photos below will indicate.

The 'calavera's ties' to the past heritage of the Aztecs can be seen in various ways. The indigenous culture of skulls and the death-goddess Mictecacihuatl (say that three times fast) is common in  pre- Columbian art.  Lady of the Dead, Mictecacihuatl, was keeper of the bones in the underworld, and she presided over the ancient month long Aztec festivals honoring the dead. With Christian (and pagan) beliefs superimposed on the ancient rituals, those celebrations have evolved into today's Day of the Dead

Here is another example of the Catrina....there are many.







The Day of the Dead is a very interesting study into Mexican and Aztec cultures.  Symbols of Dia de Muertos are found everywhere in the Mercado district of San Antonio.  This is where I photographed these.

Dia de Muertos just might be a "healthy" way for the living to deal with death....something to be "celebrated and honored" in a way, rather than feared and misunderstood.   As Wm. Cullen Bryant said in the closing lines to his poem Thanatopsis.....

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams"

Here is the link if you want to read the entire poem by Bryant....it is quite a good "study" of death.

http://www.bartleby.com/102/16.html

Not to worry.....the next blog won't be quite so grim!