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Día de los Muertos
A celebration of a lifetime
By J.D. Long-García, The Catholic Sun
November 1, 2007
Some cultures fear death. Others laugh at it.
Every Nov. 2, the Church prays for the faithfully departed. And many Catholics from Mexican and Latin American cultures celebrate Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, as a time to honor their deceased loved ones.
“When you’re celebrating the Day of the Dead, you’re celebrating life,” said Alberto Lopez Pulido, a University of San Diego ethnic studies professor.
“Here in the U.S. we try hard not to talk about death. We put people in a home or in a hospital,” he said. In Mexico, it’s different.
“Those who came before us are still with us,” he said.
Skeletons, sweet bread and sugar skulls have come to symbolize the day of remembrance. Ceramic skeletons caricature every-
day activities, often of dead loved ones carrying on their jobs.
The skeleton tradition comes from Jose Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican political cartoonist who used skeletons to mock the elite of his country, Pulido said.
“He was also doing it in a way to document their life stories,” he added. Now the skeletons serve as reminders of the lives of the departed.
Students celebrate
“The skulls may throw people off of Día de los Muertos,” said Susi Lerma, a Spanish teacher at St. Timothy Academy in Mesa. “But it’s a way that people can reconcile with death and at the same time poke fun at it.”
Every year, Lerma has her students make sugar skulls and tells them about the Day of the Dead. One year, a couple of her students got a lot more from the activity than a delicious treat.
“About five years ago we had a couple of kids who’d just lost their dad. They were unable to talk about it,” she said. “The Día de los Muertos lesson helped them start the grieving process.”
Lerma explained that Spaniards brought Catholic traditions with them when they came to the Americas. The indigenous learned to combine their traditions with All Saints and All Souls days.
Pulido noted that the cultural Day of the Dead remembers children who have died on Nov. 1 and others on Nov. 2. He also said the Day of the Dead is much more religious in traditional cultures, whereas in the United States the connection isn’t as strong.
That is unless you’re at a Catholic parish or school that integrates the cultural tradition into the liturgical calendar.
Every year, Seton Catholic High School students commemorate the day by setting up an ofrenda, or altar, two weeks before Nov. 1. During the daily prayer, the school prays for the departed and the souls in purgatory.
One of the Spanish teachers, Rudy Martinez, has his students make calaveras, or skulls, and piñatas with the day’s theme. They also have a guest speaker from the Phoenix Art Museum address the students about the Day of the Dead.
Our Lady of Perpetual Help School in Glendale and St. Mary-Basha School in Chandler also observe the day with an altar. The schools encourage families to send photographs of deceased loved ones.
St. John Bosco Interparish School and Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Scottsdale will also put up altars. Students will be learning about this cultural observance as part of their Spanish language classes and will create a variety of decorations for the altar including papel picado, calaveras, catrin y catrinas, and paper cempacuchil flowers.
The Native American Catholic communities will also be celebrating the day with Mass and Scripture services at their cemeteries, according to Franciscan Father Dale Jamison, director of Native American Ministry for the diocese.
Parishes, like St. Jerome, Ss. Simon and Jude Cathedral, Blessed Sacrament in Tolleson and Queen of Peace in Mesa, will celebrate Masses in honor of the Day of the Dead.
Catholics at Most Holy Trinity Parish will put together an altar on behalf of those who died crossing the border.
St. John Vianney Parish in Sedona has had a large altar up since the middle of October. The table features pictures of deceased loved ones, figurines and the traditional pan de muerto, bread with bones on top, will be added this week.
Fr. J.C. Ortiz, the parish pastor, has a growing collection of skeleton figurines depicting men and women in different professions and vocations.
“Death is just part of the journey,” Fr. Ortiz said. “The final stage of the journey is what Christians long and wait for. Death is when we realize the promises of Christ.”
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