Building the altar should be a festive family occasion, Cruz said: “When we make the altars, we often do it together, so it’s a happy time when we design the altar together and remember our loved ones - it brings us together.” It doesn’t have to be in a specific spot in your house, and your ofrenda doesn’t need its own dedicated table.
Inspired by those found at Grand Park and the Hollywood Forever Cemetery around this time of the year, we’ve created our own communal digital altar. This is something you are doing in your own space and your own home, so there really isn’t a “wrong” way to build your altar, but there are elements you should keep in mind and try to incorporate.Ĭalifornia Our digital Día de Muertos altar celebrates your loved ones (The interview with Cruz was conducted in Spanish and translated to English by Karen Garcia.) Different regions and families may decorate them in different ways. The altar is the portal from which the person crosses back into the world of the living, said Aldo Cruz, an altarista (altar designer and teacher) who’s worked with the Hollywood Forever event since 2006 and first learned about altar-building watching his mother in his childhood home in Oaxaca. Alcaraz said he expects to see more of those this year. Last year, altars were built for victims of COVID-19. You can build an altar in your home to a relative, a friend, a person who was meaningful to you - even if you didn’t know them personally, such as an author or celebrity - or build ones that are remembrances to groups of people. Celebrating Día de los Muertos “is a healthy way of connecting with your ancestors, honoring them and placing yourself in the lineage.” People “always say, ‘What’s with Mexicans and death?’ Mexicans confront death,” Alcaraz said. You don’t get to share the same realm as them year-round, but you get to share dinner and drinks for a night. On Día de Muertos, souls that have moved on to their next season have a chance to cross back and be with the people who loved them. Our lives have seasons and cycles, like everything else. Death doesn’t have to necessarily be sad or scary. The holiday comes from a cultural point of view that sees death not as a finality but as moving on to the next stage. In 2017, “Coco” helped introduce a new generation to its tenets and symbolism. It’s enjoyed a resurgence in Southern California since the 1970s, when the artist group Self Help Graphics & Art organized a public celebration in Los Angeles.
Today, Día de Muertos is celebrated by Mexican Catholics and many others in Mexico and the United States. But the version that we are familiar with happened - like many things in Mexico, it’s a mixture of Indigenous traditions and also of Catholic Church traditions,” said Lalo Alcaraz, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-nominated political cartoonist who served as a consultant for the Oscar-winning Pixar film “Coco.” “Mexico’s good at mixing things together.” “Versions of have been around for thousands and thousands of years. 1 and 2 - which, not coincidentally, are All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day in Catholicism. And they did see death as sort of like the start of a new life or a new cycle,” said Angie Jimenez, the altar program director for the Día de los Muertos celebration at Hollywood Forever, which takes place Saturday.Ĭatholicism has a knack for absorbing holidays into its liturgical calendar - it’s how we ended up with Saturnalia trees at Christmas and rabbits and eggs at Easter - and something like that happened in Mexico with this holiday. “The Aztecs did honor the dead with celebrations and rituals during what was the harvest season. The holiday originated in Aztec culture before Spanish colonizers and the Roman Catholic Church arrived. But for many Southern Californians, it’s the season of Día de Muertos. The dominant one in America is Halloween. It’s not a coincidence that many cultures around the world have celebrations and ceremonies relating to death at this time of year. In spring, food is planted and animals are born in summer they grow, in fall comes the harvest, and in winter things are dead. The days are shorter, the air crisper, the leaves changing.
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