The Skeleton at the Feast

"For people who don’t know much about the holiday, this is one of my favourite books. It is a wonderful way to get acquainted with it. The book is written in a very accessible way, which makes it good for both high-school students and adults. It tells the history of the holiday and discusses the ancient celebrations that took place in Mexico with the Aztecs, Olmecs and other indigenous groups. From there it goes on to show how the tradition has been observed historically throughout Mexico and how the celebrations vary regionally within the country. People today make offerings that include mixtures of both Catholic and ancient pre-Christian symbols. For example, on altars you will find pictures of Jesus or Mary or other saints. You will see religious candles, crucifixes and other Catholic iconography mixed with images of skulls and marigold flowers, which in Spanish are called flor de muerto or “flower of death.” Throughout Central America and Mexico, marigolds have been used for thousands of years to honor the dead and are still found on Day of the Dead altars today. Another thing you see on altars today is an incense called copal , which is made of pine resin. This incense was also used in Mesoamerica many hundreds of years before the arrival of Christians to the Americas, as a way to communicate with the dead. The book has beautiful pictures which illustrate these ancient rituals and how they still take place today. “It’s such an interesting, beautiful and fun way to think about the dead or death” It also has interviews with people in Mexico, including those with indigenous ancestry, who grew up at a time where their culture was looked down upon and they were told to stop doing these rituals. This holiday wasn’t always appreciated in Mexico. In the 1930s, 40s and 50s, when the government of Mexico was trying to modernise and westernise the nation, it actually encouraged indigenous populations to stop performing what urban elites considered to be superstitious and pagan rites of altar-making for the dead. These altars were mostly made by indigenous peoples in rural areas of Mexico, so the people of Mexico City and other urban centers frowned on it, considering it to be “backwards.” Indigenous children were punished in school for speaking their native languages and their families were made fun of for upholding “superstitions.” But the book also shows how views in Mexico have changed since then. In the 1970s the Mexican government did an about-face when they realized that promoting native cultures was good for tourism and for creating a unique national identity to distinguish Mexico from its former colonizers (the Spanish and French) or the United States."