Nestled among candy skulls are a few small pictures. One is of Patti Scribner’s mother, and the other of her father, both dead for years. A few candles surround the photos, and, in keeping with the life-after-death spirit of the Day of the Dead, there are also a few favorites of the deceased–a gin and tonic for Scribner’s mother, a martini for her father.
Scribner, 45, of River Forest, isn’t Latina, but found the Latino celebration of the Day of the Dead gave a welcome chance for reflection amid the commercialization that now surrounds Halloween, once observed as All Hallows Eve, or the night before All Saints’ Day.
In homes and cemeteries throughout Mexico and parts of Latin America–and in an ever-growing number of Catholic churches in the United States as well–Day of the Dead celebrations are planned for Wednesday and Thursday, the Catholic feasts of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, respectively.
A fusion of pre-Columbian and Native American traditions and Catholic customs brought by the Spaniards, Dia de los Muertos commemorates the lives of deceased family members. In much of Mexico, it is celebrated with vibrant cemetery gatherings, overnight affairs that involve food, extended family and festive decorations.
It was Latino immigrants who brought Dia de los Muertos to the United States, adapting religious celebrations in their parishes and in their communities as they came to them.
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But they acknowledge subtle modifications of the Day of the Dead, taking it from the cemeteries to churches, art galleries, schools and community centers.
And increasingly, non-Latinos exposed to Dia de los Muertos in the United States–like Scribner–are embracing it gladly.
“When I was single and living on the North Side, I started going to more and more art galleries that featured the Day of the Dead,” Scribner said. Now married, she and her husband have a vacation home in Mexico, and since her parents died, a home altar for Dia de los Muertos has become a central part of their lives each November, a part which (thanks to her children’s insistence) is now just as essential as Halloween.
“We’ve tried to introduce our children to the culture, to the traditions they have in Mexico,” Scribner said.
They found that cultural adaptations go both ways. While visiting Mexico last year, Scribner said her family saw Feliz Halloween signs all around their home in Manzanillo. To hear Scribner describe it, Halloween in Mexico seemed so … American.
Since then, she said celebrating the Day of the Dead has somehow seemed all the more justified.
“It’s kind of a nice cultural trade,” she said. “Maybe we can turn it around and have a few things from the Day of the Dead in Chicago.”
At places like St. Pius V Catholic Church in Pilsen, St. Nicholas in Evanston, or any number of churches with large Latino populations, Day of the Dead celebrations now feel well established.
More than 2,000 people at St. Pius have signed up to have their loved one’s names listed next to an altar encrusted with pan de muerto, or bread of the dead, a basket of red chilis and skeleton figures playing trumpets and violins. At St. Nicholas, a baptismal fount has been temporarily overhauled to hold hundreds of photos of the departed amid an explosion of bright yellow marigolds, the traditional flower of the dead.
In both cases, the altars are a way of keeping a centuries-old tradition alive in the immigrant community, particularly when faced with the bombardment of commercialization surrounding Halloween, which falls the same week as the Day of the Dead, said Rev. Charles Dahm, pastor of St. Pius.
Because most cemeteries in the Chicago area won’t allow families to stay overnight as they do in Latin America, churches have become popular rallying points for Day of the Dead celebrations, Dahm said.
“Having [a Day of the Dead altar] in church is a way of keeping the tradition alive,” he said. “It’s very interesting to see how some aspects of culture are jettisoned as people assimilate.”
Likewise, community centers like the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Pilsen have also fostered Dia de los Muertos traditions. The candy skulls on Scribner’s altar were made there, and the center also teaches participants how to make the elaborate paper cuttings known as papel picado, which around the Day of the Dead focus on skulls and skeletons.
On the West Side, the Pros Arts Studio will hold its annual procession of skeletons Thursday, from Dvorak Park to Casa Azatlan, a Pilsen community organization where Day of the Dead-related artwork from a month’s worth of workshops will be displayed.
At Sanctuary, a new gallery and performance space in Pilsen, the Day of the Dead will be marked Thursday with films, readings and a display by both Latino and non-Latino artists.
“We are bringing in people who are just learning about Latin culture, to interpret it,” said Lorena Rosalia Manzo, 24, one of the owners of Sanctuary. “They really admire it.”
Born in Ecuador, Manzo said she and other Chicago artists have diverged from making breads in the shapes of children and traditional berry drinks. Instead of loved ones, their altar has images of heroes like the painter, Frida Kahlo, the composer, Agustin Lara and the revolutionary, Ernesto “Che” Guevara.
“It’s more gothic than religious,” Manzo said.
Immigrant rights groups also plan to remember the dead with an exhibit of crosses representing those who died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. The commemoration will be Thursday night at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Melrose Park.
Far from being transplanted intact from Latin America to the United States, the Day of the Dead seems to have made its way in greater or lesser ways into the lives of those exposed to it.
Joan Reid, 69, a French-Canadian who attends mass at St. Pius, doesn’t plan to make sugar skulls and puckish figurines, but she did make a small altar for her home. On it are photographs of two late husbands, her parents and family friends. As for St. Pius’ Day of the Dead altar, she plans to bring candles and flowers.
“It reminds us that our loved one lives on after they are gone,” she said.
“I’ve seen it unfold in many people’s lives, especially when I think about immigrants who are here by themselves,” Rev. Esequiel Sanchez, director of Hispanic Ministry at the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, said of the Day of the Dead. “That’s their way to reconnect with the dead, with their families. They’re not alone in the world.”
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