essay on day of the dead

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Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos)

By: History.com Editors

Updated: April 24, 2023 | Original: October 30, 2018

The Day of the Dead (el Día de los Muertos), is a Mexican holiday where families welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives for a brief reunion that includes food, drink and celebration.

A blend of Mesoamerican ritual, European religion and Spanish culture, the holiday is celebrated each year from October 31-November 2. While October 31 is Halloween, November 1-2 is All Souls Day or the Day of the Dead. According to tradition, the gates of heaven are opened at midnight on October 31 and the spirits of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The spirits of adults can do the same on November 2.

Origins of Day of the Dead

The roots of the Day of the Dead, celebrated in contemporary Mexico and among those of Mexican heritage in the United States and around the world, go back some 3,000 years, to the rituals honoring the dead in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The Aztecs and other Nahua people living in what is now central Mexico held a cyclical view of the universe, and saw death as an integral, ever-present part of life.

Upon dying, a person was believed to travel to Chicunamictlán, the Land of the Dead. Only after getting through nine challenging levels, a journey of several years, could the person’s soul finally reach Mictlán, the final resting place. In Nahua rituals honoring the dead, traditionally held in August, family members provided food, water and tools to aid the deceased in this difficult journey. This inspired the contemporary Day of the Dead practice in which people leave food or other offerings on their loved ones’ graves, or set them out on makeshift altars called ofrendas in their homes.

Day of the Dead vs. All Souls Day

In ancient Europe, pagan celebrations of the dead also took place in the fall, and consisted of bonfires, dancing and feasting. Some of these customs survived even after the rise of the Roman Catholic Church, which (unofficially) adopted them into their celebrations of two Catholic holidays, All Saints Day and All Souls Day, celebrated on the first two days of November.

In medieval Spain, people would bring bring wine and pan de ánimas (spirit bread) to the graves of their loved ones on All Souls Day; they would also cover graves with flowers and light candles to illuminate the dead souls’ way back to their homes on Earth. In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores brought such traditions with them to the New World, along with a darker view of death influenced by the devastation of the bubonic plague .

How Is the Day of the Dead Celebrated?

El Día de los Muertos is not, as is commonly thought, a Mexican version of Halloween , though the two holidays do share some traditions, including costumes and parades. On the Day of the Dead, it’s believed that the border between the spirit world and the real world dissolves. During this brief period, the souls of the dead awaken and return to the living world to feast, drink, dance and play music with their loved ones. In turn, the living family members treat the deceased as honored guests in their celebrations, and leave the deceased’s favorite foods and other offerings at gravesites or on the ofrendas built in their homes. Ofrendas can be decorated with candles, bright marigolds called cempasuchil and red cock’s combs alongside food like stacks of tortillas and fruit.

The most prominent symbols related to the Day of the Dead are calacas (skeletons) and calaveras (skulls). In the early 20th century, the printer and cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada incorporated skeletal figures in his art mocking politicians and commenting on revolutionary politics. His most well-known work, La Calavera Catrina , or Elegant Skull, features a female skeleton adorned with makeup and dressed in fancy clothes. The 1910 etching was intended as a statement about Mexicans adopting European fashions over their own heritage and traditions.  La Calavera Catrina was then adopted as one of the most recognizable Day of the Dead icons.

During contemporary Day of the Dead festivities, people commonly wear skull masks and eat sugar candy molded into the shape of skulls. The pan de ánimas of All Souls Day rituals in Spain is reflected in pan de muerto, the traditional sweet baked good of Day of the Dead celebrations today. Other food and drink associated with the holiday , but consumed year-round as well, include spicy dark chocolate and the corn-based drink called atole. You can wish someone a happy Day of the Dead by saying, “Feliz día de los Muertos.”

Movies Featuring Day of the Dead

Traditionally, the Day of the Dead was celebrated largely in the more rural, indigenous areas of Mexico, but starting in the 1980s it began spreading into the cities. UNESCO reflected growing awareness of the holiday in 2008, when it added Mexico’s “Indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead” to its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In recent years, the tradition has developed even more due to its visibility in pop culture and its growing popularity in the United States, where more than 36 million people identified as being of partial or full Mexican ancestry as of 2016, according to the U.S. Census Bureau .

Inspired by the 2015 James Bond movie Spectre , which featured a large Day of the Dead parade, Mexico City held its first-ever parade for the holiday in 2016. In 2017, a number of major U.S. cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Antonio and Fort Lauderdale, held Day of the Dead parades. That November, Disney and Pixar released the blockbuster animated hit Coco , a $175 million homage to the Mexican tradition in which a young boy is transported to the Land of the Dead and meets up with his long-lost ancestors.  

Though the particular customs and scale of Day of the Dead celebrations continue to evolve, the heart of the holiday has remained the same over thousands of years. It’s an occasion for remembering and celebrating those who have passed on from this world, while at the same time portraying death in a more positive light, as a natural part of the human experience.

Día de los Muertos: A Brief History, National Hispanic Cultural Center Giardina, Carolyn, “‘Coco’: How Pixar Brought its ‘Day of the Dead’ Story to Life,” Hollywood Reporter , December 12, 2017 Dobrin, Isabel, “Día de los Muertos Comes to Life Across the Mexican Diaspora,” NPR, November 2, 2017 Scott, Chris. “Day of the Dead parade - Life imitates art,” CNN , October 28, 2016 Mictlantecuhtli, Ancient History Encyclopedia

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Day of the Dead Essay

Introduction, a general overview of the documentary’s message, the theoretical aspects of the day of the dead ceremony, the practical aspects of the day of the dead ceremony, the social/sociological aspects of the day of the dead ceremony.

Bibliography

The Day of the Dead documentary highlights how Mexicans connect with the dead during the Day of the Dead ceremony. The documentary provides detailed accounts of the ceremony by highlighting how the traditional-adherent Purepecha community, which is located in the “Island of The Souls” conducts the ceremony. Alan Aldridge describes a cult as a religious devotion towards a particular object or figure 1 .

The ceremony is a cult constituting of the catholic denomination’s religious beliefs and the pre-Hispanic rites. The Purepechas and other Mexicans religiously devote themselves to the dead during the ceremony.

The ceremony derives the belief in life after death and the idea that the dead are invisible companions from the catholic denomination. Besides, repetitive pre-Hispanic rites from the previous generations inform the ceremony.

The basic message of the ceremony is that the dead never die. They appear during the ceremony to spend time with the Mexican people. As a way of paying homage to the dead, the living persons believe that they must offer gifts. They also believe that the dead can communicate amongst themselves and share their expectations.

Therefore, the living persons imagine what the dead would prefer in terms of food, beverages and decorations. They gather the items and offer them to the dead by placing them on their tombs. In simple terms, the ceremony offers a means through which the living persons communicate with the dead.

As Alan Aldridge highlights, the highly intuitive nature of religion shows that religion must appeal to three aspects, which include people’s needs, emotions and human reason 2 . However, as discussed in this paper, the theoretical aspect of the ceremony shows that the ceremony fails to appeal to human reason.

This raises concerns regarding the ceremony as a practical religious function. Nevertheless, the assessment of social-sociological mode of expression shows that the ceremony focuses on appealing to emotions and needs, such as comfort and belonging. This explains why the Purepecha and other Mexicans adhere to a ceremony that is impractical according to normal religious standards.

As Hent de Vries notes, the theoretical aspects of religion constitute the invisible world and the belief in ultimate reality or a supreme being 3 . In any religion, these two constituents should have a strong basis to make the religion believable and trustworthy. The Day of the Dead depicts an invisible world with an ultimate reality, which is life after death.

Death is not a total separation or an absolute end because the dead are the invisible souls. However, does the claim have an ultimate basis? Essentially, the basis of this claim is tradition. As Amador highlights in the documentary, his family conducts the ceremony as informed by tradition. The ceremony is a custom that their grandparents and great-grandparents practiced.

This makes it apparent that there is no basis of the life after death claim. How do the dead become invisible and where do they go? How do people know the dead are alive and invisible? There are no clear explanations to these questions, a clear indication that the source fails to offer a spiritual explanation of how the dead become living-invisible souls.

In simple terms, the ceremony fails to appeal to the human reason because many of its theoretical aspects are inconclusive. There is no ultimate reality and this makes it difficult to acknowledge that the ceremony has a reasonable spiritual basis.

In religion, practical aspects include practices, behavior and worship. The Purepecha and other Mexicans perceive the Day of the Dead ceremony as an important function. Therefore, it is crucial that they devote to the ceremony to make it a success. Men hunt ducks and catch fish while women go to the market and cook for the dead.

The Mexicans’ remarkable devotion towards the ceremony is marked by using copal incense, buying what their dead relatives and friends liked and creating sugar figurines on which the names of the dead are written. This also goes for visiting the cemeteries, spending the night there to welcome the dead and chanting religiously during the ceremony.

They also light the candles, which they associate with divinity. Considering that these are Mexicans’ traditions, the strong devotion to the ceremony’s practices is expected. Nonetheless, is this what they are supposed to do? Markedly, as discussed in the theoretical section, the ceremony fails to appeal to the human reason. There is no explanation of how the dead become the living soul.

This means that the Mexicans have no sound religious convictions as to why they should devote to the ceremony and its practices. It is equivalent to devoting themselves to what they do not comprehend or know about. This seems unreasonable; they are blindly following traditions that have no basis just because their parents and previous generations followed them.

In this regard, they should not devote to the practices because it is impractical. However, why do they still devote to the ceremony even though it is apparent that it is impractical?

As a form of a social institution, religion focuses on implementing and preserving its practices and teachings through its interaction with the larger society. In the process, it ensures that it appeals to emotions and needs 4 . The Day of the Dead ceremony serves this function best and this explains why people devote to the ceremony in spite of its impractical nature.

The ceremony strengthens family bonds as family members collaborate to make the ceremony a success. As seen in the documentary, Amador’s wife, Estela, let the boys help her to prepare the ducks. In addition, while coming back from the market to purchase goods for the ceremony, Amador goes to help Estela to carry the goods. More so, they set up the offerings together as a family.

The ceremony also brings comfort to the Mexicans who have lost their loved ones by providing them with a sense of connection. Fundamentally, the ceremony makes people believe that their loved ones never died and are present at the ceremony with them. This creates the illusion that the dead never left them. The ceremony also nurtures a sense of belonging at the community level.

To welcome the dead to the cemetery, people collectively build an arch comprising of flowers. Besides, collective duties are assigned to the community members. For instance, children become the ministers of the ceremony.

They climb the bell tower to ring the bells during the Wake to welcome the dead. More so, after the souls of the dead depart, people collect the bread and share it amongst themselves. This brings in a sense of happiness and identity. It shows that everyone belongs to a hardworking community.

Clearly, the Day of the Dead of the dead raises concerns, in terms of whether it is a practical and trustworthy religious ceremony or not. The theoretical aspects of the ceremony show that it does not appeal to human reason. The ceremony fails to prove the ultimate reality of its spirituality or the invisibility of the dead. This makes it difficult to get to the ultimate destiny or comprehend the basis of the ceremony.

Even though people show relenting devotion to the ceremony’s practices and worship, the inconclusiveness of the ceremony show that people should not devote to the ceremony. They do not understand the basis or the ultimate reality of the ceremony to warrant their unrelenting devotion.

Nevertheless, with the strong appeal to people’s needs and emotions, it is clear why the Mexicans devote to the ceremony deemed impractical by religious standards. The ceremony brings to them a sense of comfort for losing their loved ones. This also goes for nurturing a sense of belonging, happiness and identity as a hardworking community.

Aldridge, Alan. Religion in the Contemporary World. Malden: Polity Press, 2007.

Vries, Hent de. Religion: Beyond a Concept. Bronx. Fordham Univ Press, 2008.

1 Alan Aldridge, Religion in the Contemporary World (Malden: Polity Press, 2007) 12-80.

2 Alan Aldridge, Religion in the Contemporary World (Malden: Polity Press, 2007) 80-120.

3 Hent de Vries, Religion: Beyond a Concept, and (Bronx. Fordham Univ Press, 2008), 256-393.

4 Hent de Vries, Religion: Beyond a Concept, (Bronx. Fordham Univ Press, 2008), 256-300.

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Day of the dead is full of longstanding traditions meant to honor ancestors.

Día de los Muertos , known in English as Day of the Dead, is a time-honored tradition in Mexico with origins that go back thousands of years.

In the US, you’ve probably seen the signs commonly associated with the holiday: papel picado (colorful paper with cutouts), calaveras (skulls), and marigold flowers. The holiday is also heavily featured in the movie “Coco” and the opening scene of “Spectre.” .

Día de los Muertos is a tribute to the afterlife, a day meant to honor those who have died and keep their memory alive. Unlike Halloween, which historically was a day to ward off evil spirits , Day of the Dead is more about paying respects to loved ones who have died.

Here’s what else you need to know about this special day.

When is Day of the Dead?

Day of the Dead always starts on November 1 and ends on November 2. During those days, it is believed that the spirits of the dead return home to spend time with their families.

Who celebrates Day of the Dead?

Although Day of the Dead is predominantly associated with Mexico, other countries, even those outside Latin America, also celebrate their own versions of the holiday. In the Philippines, the holiday is called Undas , and is also celebrated on the first two days of November. Just like in Mexico, Filipinos visit their loved ones’ graves and also create altars to those who have passed.

In Haiti, the day is called Fèt Gede , festival of the dead. People dress up in white, black and purple, while parades are held across the country.

What are the origins of Day of the Dead?

Day of the Dead originates from rituals practiced by Indigenous people in the Americas, most notably the Aztecs. The Aztecs had a ritual known as Miccaihuitl, which was a time to honor the dead.

But when the Spanish arrived to the Americas, they brought Catholicism, which had its own celebrations: All Saints’ Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2), both of which also commemorate those who have passed. The Spanish then incorporated their own holidays with Indigenous traditions, which evolved into Día de los Muertos.

What are Day of the Dead traditions?

Many people honor Day of the Dead by visiting the graves of dead relatives and loved ones. But they don’t necessarily go to mourn; instead, they clean the graves and headstones or decorate them with flowers. Some might pray, while others play music.

The environment almost resembles a party, with music, food and drinks. People come together to share stories of their loved ones — helping keep their memory alive.

Some cities in Mexico also celebrate the day with parades and festivals . Many will paint their face to resemble a bare skull and wear costumes. Women especially will dress up as La Catrina, a tall female skeleton commonly depicted wearing a fancy gown and a lavish hat flaring over her head.

Though characters like La Catrina have become a symbol of Día de los Muertos, the imagery originates from Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, who sketched it in 1910 as a mockery of Mexico’s upper classes .

What are ofrendas?

One of the most sacred aspects of Day of the Dead are the altars, called ofrendas. These altars are built in homes, schools, or other public places to honor the deceased.

Family members will top the altar with a large photo of the loved one, along with colorful papel picado, which translates to “ perforated paper .” The color tissue papers represent air as the four elements are meant to be portrayed in the altars. Marigold petals are also featured throughout the altars, which are meant to guide the spirits back home with their bright color and pungent scent. Candles, both to light the way and represent the deceased, are also commonly seen on the ofrendas, as well as pan de muerto, a traditional Mexican pan dulce rooted in Aztec customs. Skulls made of sugar , also commonly placed on ofrendas, are meant to allude to the ever-present nature of death.

Salt, often placed in the shape of a cross, is placed on or in the vicinity of the ofrenda as a means to purify the visiting souls. Families will also place a container of water, and sometimes tequila, on the altars, so souls can quench their thirst after their journey.

But these altars can also be personal. Some families will include the deceased’s favorite food or personal tokens from their lives, like a favorite book or a shirt. All of it serves both as a way of remembering the dead and honoring them in their return.

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32: How I Celebrate Life on the Day of the Dead (González)

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Linda González

#argument, #sharedvalues, #ethos, #pathos, #descriptive, #kairos, #logos, #currentevents, #advice, #artsandculture #global

Every year as November 1 approaches, I do the math to remember how long ago my father passed away on Día de los Muertos. This year, I dutifully pulled up my calculator and subtracted 1996 from 2017. Twenty-one years. And then the obvious hits me. I can always know how long it has been since he passed on to his next life by subtracting one year from my twins’ age. They are 22 and were just a year old when their abuelo died. I remember carrying Gina down the aisle behind the casket, her and Teo’s new life blooming while that same year Tot’s had faded.

I set up my altar this week, pulling out the pictures of my dearly departed and adding new ones from this year. The first step is always laying out the cross-stitched mantle with years of stains and a dark mark from when a candle burned too hot. I tape papel picado above the altar, remembering this ritual is not a dirge; it is an opening of the veil to celebrate the lives that touched me and my comunidades. It is a time to think about why I miss them and ponder how to keep them alive in the present moment.

I imagine my dad’s disappointed spirit hovering over the Dodgers as they lost in the World Series. I invoke my mom’s stovetop magic as I figure out what to do with a bag of zucchini that must be cooked tonight. I remember the mothers who grieve their sons’ vibrant spirits every day, and I take a moment to send Snapchats to my beloved cuates.

Día de los Muertos is so ingrained in my being that I am startled to see people in costume; my mind wonders for a second, “What’s that all about?” This is amazing because I was so involved in Halloween while my children were growing up—making costumes, figuring out the healthiest candy to hand out, trading my children’s candy for money so they were not overloaded with sugar (and I could store their loot for the next Halloween).

In years past, I have hosted gatherings to decorate sugar skulls, loving this tradition of blending death with creativity. I treasured giving my children and their friends the chance to be playful and imaginative with something that so many people fear. As a writer, I live in that crevice of light and shadow, writing drafts only to end their existence for another version and then another and then yet another.

I love the transparency of life and death, the calaveras that dance and meditate and watch TV. Each skeleton could be anyone of us, and one day we will know what our antepasados experienced after their last out-breath. One day we will see there is no separation between any of us, alive and dead.

The first and only altar in my parents’ home was the one we created on a cake after my dad’s funeral, laying out the detallitos of his life that he allowed to be visible. The secrets were still within him, wisps of energy that over the years encircled us with cariño or strangled our voices or tripped us as we ran.

As I set up my altar year after year, I breathe in the musty smell of the newspapers I have carried from home to home. These crinkled papelitos wrap and unwrap memories and give space for those I loved and lost to whisper consejos in the stillness. I unbind my heart wounds and apply the salve gained from another year of living—that little bit more of perspective and wisdom nestled in my corazón that wraps around me like a soft, colorful rebozo.

____________________

Linda González is the author of the memoir The Cost of Our Lives. She has published essays in literary journals and books, is a storyteller, and received her MFA from Goddard College. This essay is an excerpt from Endangered Species, Enduring Values: An Anthology of San Francisco Area Writers and Artists of Color , edited by Shizue Seigel, Pease Press, 2018. www.peasepress.com . It was published in Yes! Magazine, 31 October 2018.

How I Celebrate Life on the Day of the Dead by Linda González is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

Mexico’s Day of the Dead

This essay will provide an overview of Mexico’s Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) celebration. It will explore the cultural and historical significance of the holiday, its traditional practices, and symbols, such as ofrendas (altars), calaveras (skulls), and marigolds. The piece will discuss how the celebration honors the deceased and reflects Mexican attitudes toward death, life, and ancestry. Moreover, at PapersOwl, there are additional free essay samples connected to Day Of The Dead.

How it works

The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday that starts on October 31st and ends on November 2nd. I have not personally experienced this cultural event but, I have a friend who is Mexican and travels to Mexico every year for this celebration. When she told me about the Day of the Dead, I researched videos online and was able to get a glimpse of the festival.

The Day of the Dead which is also called “Día de los Muertos”, which originated from the ancient traditions of the pre-Columbian cultures.

These rituals would celebrate the death of ancestors that dates back from 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. Everything was dedicated to the goddess “Lady of the Dead” who in modern day is named “La Calavera Catrina”. In the late 20th century, November 1st would honor deceased children and infants called Día de los Innocents (Day of the Innocents) and Día de los Angelitos (Day of the Little Angels). Meanwhile, on November 2nd, the adults who are deceased would be honored. This day is called Día de los Muertos or Día de los Difuntos (Day of the Dead).

According to (Day, 2003), “on October 31, All Hallows Eve, the children make a children’s altar to invite the angelitos (spirits of dead children) to come back for a visit. November 1st is All Saints Day, and the adult spirits will come to visit. November 2 is All Souls Day, when families go to the cemetery to decorate the graves and tombs of their relatives. The three-day fiesta is filled with marigolds, the flowers of the dead; Muertos (the bread of the dead); sugar skulls; cardboard skeletons; tissue paper decorations; fruit and nuts; incense, and other traditional foods and decorations.”

Individuals would go to cemeteries to be with those who have passed and build private alters with the loved one’s favorite food and drinks, as well as pictures and memorabilia. This would encourage the souls to hear the prayers of the living. Throughout the three-day period, the families would clean and decorate the grave sites. Toys would be brought to the deceased children’s graves and alcohol would be brought to the adults.

During the festivities, food is eaten by the living and given to the spirits. Tamales are on of the most common dishes prepared. The main alcoholic beverage that would be drank during the festival is pulque, which is also called agave wine. It’s fermented sap from the agave plant, with the color of milk and a sour yeast-like taste, (Pulque, 2018). Also, Jamaican iced tea is popular. The main symbols that resemble this day are skeletons and skulls.

After watching several videos on YouTube, there is a parade that goes in the middle of the Mexican cities. People would dress up as the dead and would dance down the round. Different colors of face paint would cover their faces and rag and torn clothing to depict the dead. Some are in fancy clothes portraying as enjoying life.

The Day of the Dead is also like China’s Tomb Sweeping Day. Unlike the holiday in Mexico, China celebrates their holiday in April. It falls on the first day of fifth solar term of the traditional Chinese lunisolar calendar which makes it the 15th day of the Spring Equinox (April 4th or 5th). Tomb Sweeping Day is also called “Qingming or Ching Ming Festival”, (Qingming Festival, 2018). During this time, the Chinese people would visit the grave sites to sweep the tombstones. For over 5,000 years, all levels of these people from royal to peasantry would gather together to remember those who have passed.

Rituals would be performed to honor those who died. Those of all ages would kneel to offer prayers at the tombstones of the ancestors, offering burning incense sticks and silver leafed paper, sweep the tombs and offer food, tea, wine, chopsticks memorabilia of the ancestors just like they do in Mexico. Depending on the type of religion, some would pray to a higher deity to honor their ancestors while many others would pray directly to their ancestral spirits. Pomegranate and willow branches are popular religious symbols that symbolize purity. An example of how these two events differ, is that the Qingming festival is a time when couples traditionally start courting. Also, the act of burning spirit money or “hell money”. Hell money is a form of joss paper printed to resemble legal tender bank notes. This paper has no official form of currency since the sole purpose is to be offered as burnt offerings to deceased individuals, (Hell money, 2018).

This cultural event has been influenced by other cultures including the Aztec traditions honoring the dead. Majority of the Latin American countries were Catholics, while northern America was Protestant. All Saints Day and All Souls Day are mostly practiced by Catholic religion which originated by the Spanish and French nations.

The Day of the Dead has influenced Pop Culture. Hollywood movies, zombie shows, Halloween and politics have been a huge influence on this holiday, (Stevenson, 2016). For example, Mexico City was the background in the James Bond movie “Spectre”. In the background, you can see the city celebrating the Day of the Dead with a parade and people in skeleton outfits and floats. Another example is the children’s short film “Día de los Muertos”. This three-minute film shows a young girl placing flowers on the grave of her mother and gets pulled into the underworld of friendly skeletons. She gets hands on of the true meaning behind the holiday which also teaches us what the holiday really means, (Vargas, 2015).

The holiday is recognized in other Latin American countries including Brazil, Belize, Guatemala, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. All countries have similar celebrations but, also with some minor differences. For example, in Belize, Day of the Dead is practiced by the Yucatec Maya ethnicity. The celebration is known as “food for the souls”. Altars are made and decorated with food, drinks, candies, and candles. Where as in Bolivia, this holiday is called Día de las Natitas (Day of the Skulls) on May 5th. In pre-Columbian times, the Andeans had a tradition of sharing a day with the bones of their ancestors on the third year after their family member was buried. Today, those families keep the skulls for these rituals. On November 9th, the families would crown the skulls with fresh flowers and different garments just to make offerings of cigarettes, coca leaves, alcohol and other items to thank the dead for that year’s protection. But, in Peru, people only visit the cemetery and bring flowers to decorate the graves of dead relatives and even sometimes play music for them. In the United States, states such as Texas and Arizona typically do the most traditional form of this holiday. The Hispanic-Americans still wear masks, carry signs, and wear skeleton costumes during the celebrations.

In Conclusion, the Day of the Dead is widely celebrated all over the world. Some countries share the same way they celebrate this holiday and other countries such as China and other Asian countries celebrate their holiday at a different time of the year.

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ESSAY: Dead at 55: Day of the Dead (1985)

Continuing  a series that celebrates the fifty-fifth anniversary of Night of the Living Dead with a look at the classic zombie film and its many follow-ups.

Nine years passed between Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead , after which another seven years went by until Day of the Dead was released in 1985. Unlike certain sequel-makers, George A. Romero can hardly be accused of rushing his zombie trilogy – and a trilogy it would remain until the twenty-first century. This steady-going ethos sums up Day of the Dead , which is above all a careful film: it takes its time in showing us its scenario and central concepts, making sure that we appreciate how different it is from the zombie films that came before.

The various attempts to imitate or continue Night of the Living Dead had, by and large, focused on the start of the zombie apocalypse (or the re-start, in the case of John Russo’s Return of the Living Dead novel ). Even Dawn of the Dead merely depicted a later stage of the same process, and followed the same general outline of its predecessor, albeit on a grander scale: a group of characters shelter in a building and watch civilisation fall via TV broadcasts.

Day of the Dead , meanwhile, introduces audiences to the world that remains after the zombie apocalypse has taken place. As the opening scenes make clear, the new normal consists of abandoned cities haunted by the living dead. Zombies outnumber humans by a vast number (400,000 to one is the estimate given in the film). The narrative focuses on a community of scientists and military men residing in an underground bunker, apparently with enough resources to eke out a stable existence.

Unlike the protagonists in Dawn of the Dead , who enjoyed amusement arcades and candlelit dinners as the world crumbled, the scientists in Day of the Dead have no time for such frivolities. The main character, Dr. Sarah Bowman, intends to find a cure for the zombie plague, and is aided by her lover Miguel even as the latter’s mental health deteriorates. Helicopter pilot John is unconvinced by her efforts, arguing that the apocalypse is God’s will: “He visited a curse on us, so we might get a look at what Hell was like. Maybe He didn’t want to see us blow ourselves up and put a big hole in His sky.” Shades of Peter’s “no more room in Hell” speech from Dawn of the Dead ; significantly, Peter was identified as being of Trinidadian descent, and John has a Caribbean accent. Even in this era of science fiction zombies, the associations with Caribbean folklore have not quite been severed.

Another key member of the compound is Dr. Logan, a scientist conducting experiments on captive zombies. Logan’s laboratory, containing an assortment of part-animated corpses in various states of vivisection, provides the film with some of its most striking scenes of gross-out gore: a particularly memorable moment involves a zombie who has no head, only an exposed brain, yet remains mobile. But Logan’s mad-scientist exploits also lend Day of the Dead a considerable degree of pathos. His end-goal is to return the zombies to a state of sapient humanity, and he has succeeded in teaching rudimentary communication and tool-usage to a test subject nicknamed Bub. The interactions between the two recall the meeting of the monster and the blind hermit in Bride of Frankenstein .

1985 was the right year for zombies to be placed under the microscope. By this point, zombies in the Romero/Savini mould had lost their novelty value, having passed through a string of post- Dawn imitations until they ended up as back-up dancers for Michael Jackson in 1983. Zombies had even been commodified for children. In 1985, kids were collecting zombies in the form of bouncy form-rubber balls (Madballs) and comical trading cards (Garbage Pail Kids). The latter found its way into Turmoil in the Toy Box , a notorious work of polemic by Christian author Phil Philips:

These cards do not picture little babies doing cute things. Instead, they show babies whose heads are being decapitated by a guillotine, babies smoking cigarettes, and another of a baby whose arms and legs have been cut off and scattered on the floor. Cute? […] Dead Ted shows a badly decomposing boy rising from a grave.

This was the natural life cycle of a film monster: a recurring celluloid nightmare could remain scary for only so long. Just as an earlier generation of horror-film antagonists had been demoted into foils for Abbott & Costello and spokespersons for breakfast cereal, zombies were becoming a bit of a joke.

Romero had already been ahead of that curve with Dawn of the Dead ’s pie-in-the-face scenes; come Day of the Dead , he adapted to the new situation by treating zombies as objects of intrigue and analysis. If audiences are no longer afraid of zombies, then they can be invited to take a closer look and perhaps find something new. After all, Night of the Living Dead was inspired by Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend , a book that offered a scientific analysis of vampires. Now, the process could begin anew.

Except that, as much as it plays with its genre elements, Day of the Dead turns out to be a thoroughly conventional piece of storytelling.

The film has a set of full-fledged villains in the form of the brutal, bigoted Captain Rhodes and his men, who are established early on as moral opposites to Sarah and her associates. This is something that sets it apart from the earlier films in the series. Granted, there had been unlikable characters before, from Mr. Cooper in Night to the biker gang at the climax of Dawn . But Day is the only one of the three to feature a group of characters who are clearly defined as antagonists throughout its entire length.

In the introduction to their 1989 anthology Book of the Dead , John Skipp and Craig Spector argue that Night of the Living Dead “did an end run around the tidy horror convention of good vs. evil , subbing the far more morally ambiguous and provocative equation of living vs. dead .” This factor is completely abandoned in Day of the Dead . We are no longer seeing a senseless world where the sole survivor can be mistaken for a zombie and shot dead. When a sympathetic character perishes in Day , it serves a purpose – either a heroic act of self-sacrifice, or a narrative point to emphasise just how bad the bad guys are.

Eventually, the villains themselves get their just deserts at the hands (and teeth) of the zombies. The graphic scenes of dismemberment and evisceration that ensue are the film’s gruesome money-shots, repulsing the audience yet also offering the base catharsis of the baddies getting punished while the goodies escape to safety. Having experimented with zombies, Day of the Dead returns them to their role in the old 1950s EC horror comics: as agents of retribution, rising from the grave to slay wrongdoers.

When viewed today, Day also has the overfamiliar feeling that comes with its setting having been imitated more closely than that of its predecessor, Dawn . A shopping mall is still a fairly out-there choice of location in a zombie apocalypse story. Laboratories and military installations, meanwhile, have since become default settings for the genre, as seen in the Resident Evil and 28 Days Later series to name just two examples. All of this adds to the lingering impression of Day having not so much broken new ground as hit a dead end.

Most film trilogies have a weak link, and given that Romero’s zombie triptych began with two films that became enduring classics of the genre, it was perhaps too much to expect the third outing to be up to the same standard. Day of the Dead is a solid effort, and has enough on offer to make it worthwhile, but the end result is something like the vivisected zombies in Logan’s lab – outwardly alarming, yet incapable of bite.

Next: Time for a party…

Doris V. Sutherland

2 thoughts on “ essay: dead at 55: day of the dead (1985) ”.

You going to cover the infamously bad remakes of the “of the Dead” trilogy?

I will indeed, although my treatment might be a little kinder!

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Home — Essay Samples — Life — Day of The Dead — Day Of The Dead In Different Cultures

Day of The Dead in Different Cultures

• Categories: Day of The Dead Tradition Western Civilization

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Published: Aug 6, 2021

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