Legacy MattersThe wonderful and various diversity of cultures in America, now more like a salad bowl than a melting pot, offers us many piquant customs, we could do well to adopt and remix to our own tastes. One of those is Dios de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday that mingles the Aztec culture and Catholicism.
It's estimated that the Aztecs ritually sacrificed about 20,000 people a year. Still, their belief that the souls of the departed remained on earth in the form of butterflies and birds is a charming one. So with the return of the Monarch butterflies, who migrate to Mexico for the winter, the souls of the departed are welcomed home.
Ancient Celts often sacrificed animals and humans at this time of year to free the imprisoned souls of sinners. They believed that evil spirits roamed the word, eager to do mischief or worse on the eve of their new year on October 31. To trick them, they would dress up as a ghost or a witch to fool the evil spirits and get through the night safely and so began Halloween. The Celtic custom was to extinguish all hearth fires then gather at a sacred grove where Druid priests would build a bonfire to welcome back dead ancestors. After dancing around the bonfire to frighten away the spirites, people would return home with lighted torches to ceremonially light the first hearth fire of the new year and exchange tales and ghost stories of their encounters with the spirit world.
Celtic Catholicism transformed many of the druid practices and November 1 became the Feast of All Saints and November 2, the Feast of All Souls. These two customs mixed in Mexico as the Dios de los Muertos and we can remix again to remember and welcome back memories of our beloved dead. Just how can be seen in Sacred Ordinary as 16 year old Anthony remember remembers his grandfather. 
and Fran remembers her grandfather 
Just another way of creating and adding to our family archives.
Posted by Jill Fallon at November 3, 2004 1:27 PM | Permalink