Both Halloween and Day of the Dead are popular around here and, understandably, the holidays all run together, more or less. Being part gringo, we trick-or-treat with all the pagans in town (despite being chastized by my husband, the catechism teacher, the little-old-lady Catholic neighbors, younger protestant friends across town . . . sheesh! It seems that anti-Halloween fervor is one of the few things that both Catholics and Protestants can agree on in Mexico). But I´ve got new friends who also celebrate Halloween, so we had a great time! However, in order to preserve traditional Mexican culture, the teachers at school asked that the kids dressed up as catrinas on the last day of October. They´re the traditional, well-dressed skeletons created by José Guadalupe Posada and popularized by Diego Rivera. I support that honoring of culture. So we dressed as catrinas. But the kids were joined by plenty of witches, Draculas, zombies, and even a boy wizard.
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| The parents were invited to a Day of the Dead Open House at school. We showed up early, during recess, and Joey was a bit frightened of all the other catrinas running around the school patio. He clearly didn´t get a good look at his own face! |
Each class displayed Day of the Dead artifacts: Clara´s decorated skeleton masks, Joey´s class collaborated to make a full-size altar, the students in another class brought in mini-altars, and the last class clothed little catrina paper dolls.
Halloween night, Joey was much happier to be Zorro from Dora, instead of his scary-catrin self from the day before.
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