The day of the dead

The death is the unavoidable destination for all human life and it is natural this reality cause us scare and anguish, mainly when we are in danger to die or when the death affects our dear beings.
This summary dedicated to the celebration of the Day of the Dead has the purpose of bringing near children and adults with the idea of the death. So, they will go accepting as unavoidable part of the human life. How some old cultures also made rites about the death; and strengthen the character from the religious point of view.
Also, I hope you can understand the Mexican sensibility, our so particular way to understand and give sense to the celebration of the Day of the Dead.
More than the act to die, more important is what's going on after to die. That other world from which we make representations, customs and traditions that become cultures. So, in front of the unknown road of the death, we can only imagine with symbols.

In the old cultures like China and Egyptian, the cult to the dead is considered as a symbol of family unit. They yielded them cult building temples and pyramids.
In the China culture for example, in the anniversaries, they burned incense, lit candles and offered food on an altar. Were the days in which they remembered the big debts that they had with their ancestors.
The old Egyptians believed that the human had two spirits. When the body dies, one goes to the further on and the other remains wondering in the space, so, he needs to eat. They considered this Spirit live in the body that was carefully embalmed. So, he can continue existing. This spirit receives the offerings.

The celebration of the Day of the Dead is linked to the Agricultural calendar from the Prehispanic ancient; because this is the only celebration when start the gathering or crop. So, this is the first great banquet after the shortage seasons of previous months and they shared it until with the Dead.
Náhuatl culture considered that the destiny of humanity is perishing. We can find this concept in writings from that time, from a Prehispanic king and poet, Netzahualcóyotl (1391-1472). He wrote: "we are humans / all will go on, / all will be die in the earth. / Like a painting, / all will go erasing. / Like a flower, / we will go to drying / here on the earth. / Meditate it, men eagles and tigers, / although you are from jade, / although you are golden, / also we will go on / to the place of the rests. / We have to wake up, / nobody will be remaining."

This feeling about destination should be understanding in sense that the Aztec people were conceived themselves like soldiers of the Sun, and their rites contributed to strengthen the Sun-Tonatiuh in his divine combat against the stars, symbols of wrong and night or darkness. The Aztecs offered sacrifices to their gods; and in just retribution, they spilled the light or the day and the rain on the humanity in order to make grow the life.
The cult to the death is one of the basic elements in the religion of Mexican ancient. They believed that the death and the life constitute a unity. For the prehispanic people the death is not the end of the existence, it is a transitional way toward something better.
We can find symbols about the cult to the death in their architecture –pyramids-, sculpture and ceramic, as well as in poetic songs. There are evidenced about pain and anguish are feelings caused by the step to the death; to the “Mictlán”, place of the dead people or the spirit that have to wait for good destination, the paradises of the “Tlalocan”.

The sacrifice of death is not a personal purpose. The death is justified in the well-fares collectivity, to continuity the creation; is more important the health of the world. This purpose does not involve the individual salvation. The dead people disappear in order to return to the world of the shades, to melt to the air, to the fire and to the earth; back to essence that encourages the universe.
The human sacrifices are considered as the tribute that the conquering towns paid to their gods, and they in retribution fed the life to the universe and to their society.
On the other hand, when somebody died, they organized parties in order to help the spirit in their road to. Like in Egyptian culture, the old Mexicans buried the bodies, wrapped them in a carpet handmade with the leaf of palm, called “petate”. They put food for when the spirit feel hungry, because their trip by the road of the Chignahuapan (from the “náhuatl” language: new “apan” in the river; that is to say "on the new rivers"); similar to the purgatory, this road was very difficult, because they could find cold and hot places.

This celebration conserves many of the Prehispanic influence about the cult to the dead, we can found them in Tláhuac, Xochimilco and Mixquic, places near to Mexico City. In the state of Michoacán, the most important ceremonies are from the purépechas Indians, from the famous lake of Pátzcuaro, especially in the island of Janitzio. Equally important are the ceremonies from the towns in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca state and in Cuetzalán town, in Puebla estate.
On their altars, they put light candles; burn incense, artifacts designed specially for that. They place Christian images like crucifix and the virgin of Guadalupe. They put portraits of their died beings. The foods are placed in plates handmade with mud; these foods are characteristic of the region. They put too alcoholic drinks or glasses with water, juices of fruits, breads made for this special days, decorated with red sugar to simulate the blood. Cookies, basked fruits and candies cook with pumpkin.

We have a special feeling about this natural phenomenon and the pain that produce between us. The death is like a mirror that reflects the kind of life in which we had lived and our regret about it. When the death arrives, the death remembers us the life. If our death does not make sense, neither made sense our life, "tell me how you die and I will tell you how you are."
Making a mixture of the Prehispanic cults and the Christian religion, they say the death is not the natural end of the life; it is the process of an infinite cycle. Life, death and resurrection are the stadiums of the process in the Christian religion, in accordance with the Prehispanic concept of the death, the sacrifice of the death- the act of die- is the consent to accept the process creator that gives us the life. The body dies and the spirit is given to God (to the gods) as a contracted debt by to give us the life.
But the Christianity modifies the sacrifice of the death. The death and the salvation become an individual process, for the Christians the person is the one who count.
The beliefs unite again as soon as the life is only justified and transcends in the sacrifice of death.
Since the death does not have any meaning or value that make transcend it, so, we have to belief that the death is the inevitable end of a natural process.

It is a fact that the death exists, but nobody thinks about its own death. In the contemporary, the "death" it is a word that is not pronounced. The Mexicans we neither thought about our own death, but we are not afraid it because the religious faith gives us the force in order to recognize it and maybe because we are also a little indifferent to the life.

The scorn, the fear and the pain against the death are unites to the celebration that we professed. It is say, maybe the death could be a vengeance to the life, because the death liberate us from those vanities in which we lived; and convert us, to the end of the times, to all for equal in what we are, a peace of bones.

Then, the death becomes humorous and ironic; we called it "calaca," bony, skinny, scrawny, and skeletal. The act of die, we give definitions like succumb, stretching the legs, extinguish. These expressions allow play a joke, making proverbs and verses.

The death is present in our game, we made skulls of sugar, figures cuttings of paper, colored skeletons, toys of skeletons, marionettes of skeletons and when we make cartoons or comics. Not to play as usually, maybe as a decoration in the house and schools. We put some of them in the altar too.

[Sheaf or bundle of reeds]	[The god mictlantecuhtli]	[Prehispanic mummy]
The Aztecs divided the time in centuries of 52 years. At the end of each cycle, they celebrated a ceremony called "the tiing of the years". In the sculpture, each cycle is represented by a "sheaf or bundle of reeds." This sculpted stone symbolizes the end of an Aztec century.	Mictlantecuhtli was the god of the dead. Those who was died in natural death they went to the "Mictlan"	The Aztec culture, they believed after dying, they would continue living in another way. the dead were buried with all kind of objects that could be help in their trip to the Mictlan.