When someone mentions Hal-loween, the same ideas come to mind for lots of people- sickening amounts of sweets and chocolate, crazy costumes, carving pumpkins and haunted houses. It’s the time of year for people to show their creative sides, have fancy dress parties and to let themselves get scared. Well not if you’re a Mexi-can.

There are places around the world where Halloween isn’t a big deal, and that there is nothing special in particular about the 31st of Oc-tober, and Mexico is one of them. For families in Mexico, or of a Lat-in American Culture, it’s the 1st of November that is the exciting day.

The big event is called ‘El Dia de los Muertos.’ This translates into English as ‘The Day of the Dead’. Sounds pretty frightening right? Well it isn’t meant to be at all.

It falls on the 1st and 2nd of November of every year, and is the most important holiday in Mexico. This day has been cele-brated for many years and has a lot of tradition involving religion that families stick to. As morbid

as the name sounds at first, the Day of the Dead is actually filled with joy and remembrance, and to be considered a loving ritual for families to honour their deceased loved ones.

One person who has been for-tunate enough to celebrate both events is 20 year old student Gabriella Noe. She has spent her life living in various different parts of Europe and America, including Mexico, Michigan, Germany and the UK. Gabriella has celebrated Day of the Dead and Halloween in Mexico, America and the UK, and when she was asked which holiday was better, she had a very tough time making up her mind.

“Which holiday is better? That’s a really tough one! I suppose I should really be saying El Dia de los Muertos, but I really do love Halloween, especially in America where everyone goes all out for costumes and parties. Halloween is great for partying.” For a young student, enjoying a good party is a very fair comment to say the least.

The original concept of this day is that is it believed that the souls of people who have passed away in the family come back, and the tradition is to make an altar with various offerings for them. The offerings consist of their favourite foods and drinks, and one key tra-ditional element- sugar skulls. All these offerings are placed on the altar. A picture of the person the alter is dedicated to is also added, along side traditional Mexican flowers and candles.

Day of the Dead- Festival of Fun or Day of Despair?

Mexican sugar skulls have become more popular recently because of their look, and for the artistic value instead of the actual food. The designs are quite popular for tattoos or for paintings, decorat-ed with dots, hearts and various colours.

Calacas and Calaveras can be found absolutely everywhere during this festival and are im-possible to avoid. Calaveras are whimsical caricatures are the most recognised emblems of Day of the Dead, and are usually places in a humorous settings carrying out domestic activities.

One of the most important addi-tions to the altar is a cross that is made out of sand and salt on the ground in front of it. This is there so the souls know where to go, and where to find the altar. The altar is decorated with items that show their character and personal-ity, so seeing the favourite colours of the family member would be expected.

Some argue that these two celebra-tions actually have nothing to do with each other, and some similar-ities are nothing but a coincidence. However there are in fact histor-ical links, which do show the two days of celebration, have a con-nection. Very traditional Mexican families dislike Halloween, as they think it is just an American im-port that is mainly about money rather than something to actually celebrate.