With Day of the Dead approaching, Monica Diaz is trying to recall one particular detail about her late grandfather. Did he put a dish towel over his knee before he began making the buñuelos? Certainly, he would have had to.
How else could he have smoothed out the dough across his knee, his beefy hands sculpting the mixture into a spongy disc? With no towel his pants would have been a mess.
But Diaz remembers how fast her grandfather would churn out the pastries, then slide them into a skillet of sizzling oil where they puffed and swelled. As they cooled on the kitchen counter he’d shower the buñuelos with sugar and cinnamon. To this day those treats remind the Georgia State University assistant professor of her grandfather, Jose, and her grandmother, Lucinda, and of Diaz’s childhood in Monterrey, Mexico.
“My grandfather was a union leader in the 1970s and 1980s, very charismatic, such a respected person,” Diaz said, sitting in her Johns Creek family room. “But when my grandmother got Alzheimer’s, he would make the sweets and tamales she had always made.”
Even as Diaz and her husband, Agnes Scott instructor Ethan Sharp, get their four kids ready for Halloween, Diaz is preparing the stories she will tell them as the family observes Day of the Dead on Tuesday and Wednesday. Stories like the one about her grandfather.
If Halloween revolves around horror movies, costume parties, haunted houses and fright, Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos is the opposite. It is about honoring the dead rather than fearing death.
Centuries old, it is a celebration of family members and friends who have passed away, a two-day observance with deep Latin American roots. That it coincides with All Saints Day and All Souls Day has much to do with the influence of the Catholic Church and the legacy of colonization in Latin America.
Now, with Atlanta’s burgeoning Latino population, the holiday is gaining more visibility in the metro area.
Nearly 3,000 people are expected to attend the annual Day of the Dead celebration at the Atlanta History Center today. There will be skeletons and sugar skulls and treats, but in this tradition the objects are not macabre. They are accessories to the central theme of the holiday: remembering loved ones by sharing their stories.
“It’s a way of talking about death through generations in a way that’s not fearful or shameful,” said Andrea Haan, a first-grade teacher at the Westminster School in Atlanta. Her students made some of the decorations that are part of the history center event.
Day of the Dead rituals captured Haan’s imagination while she lived for eight years in San Francisco and Los Angeles, cities with large Latino communities, where Dia de los Muertos celebrations are big, citywide events. They were elaborate and vibrant, and in some ways, rivaled the buoyancy of a Halloween party. Schools had observances as well.
But what stuck with her was the level of effort so many families went through for their at-home celebrations.
“It’s as significant as Thanksgiving for a lot of families,” Haan said.
As with any tradition, families decide the specifics of how they will observe it, if at all. But for those who do observe, there are basic outlines that have been passed down for ages. In the days leading up to Nov. 1, families begin to make altars in their homes that are dedicated to the memory of the loved ones they intend to honor. They can be as tiny as a tabletop or larger than a piano, but they usually include candles, flowers, fruit, a photograph of the person and symbols of something they enjoyed doing, like playing cards or music. Colorful sugar skulls, meant to suggest the afterlife are added, as are containers of some the deceased’s favorite foods and drinks. Toys join the display if the person being honored was a child.
The first day, Nov. 1, is meant to honor children who have died. The second day is in memory of adults. On both days surviving family members or friends gather to eat, drink and tell stories about their loved one. In some Latin American towns, whole communities gather in their church cemeteries to clean their families’ graves and hold celebrations that stretch well into the night.
When he first learned about Dia de los Muertos, the whole idea of it struck Jack Morgan, a 9th-grade teacher at Westminster, as odd. Then he thought back to church homecoming weekend he attended every November as a child in rural eastern North Carolina, and found some parallels.
“We’d go out and clean off the family graves, make sure the grass was edged, that there were fresh flowers,” said Morgan. “Then we’d have dinner on the church grounds. It was your weekend to do homage in the country to those people who were dead, but who were never gone because you still lived on the land they did and you worked the land they did. For us it was directly related to our faith life.”
A love affair with Mexico is what led Walt Bilinski and Steve MacNeil to embrace aspects of Day of the Dead as their own. Bilinski’s family is from New York; MacNeil is a Californian, through and through. The owners of No Mas Cantina spend almost half the year living in Mexico. For years they have built a huge Dia de los Muertos altar in the entrance of their Castleberry Hill restaurant. Stretching nearly 11 feet high, it is a marvel of freshly cut bamboo, succulent grapes, apples and bananas, glittery sugar skulls and miniature skeletons, candles, serapes and tequila. Employees from Oaxaca to Panama pitched in to build it. Photos of friends and grandparents are interspersed. There’s even one of actor Ricardo Mantalbon, who Bilinski and MacNeil consider a kindred spirit.
“So many customers will come in who don’t know a thing about Day of the Dead,” said Bilinski. “They’ll ask, ‘Why do you have so many skeletons?’”
They explain that it’s not Halloween-lite.
“Day of the Dead, to me at least, lets you know that happiness is in what’s going on in life right now and not to be as afraid of death,” MacNeil said.
That was a lesson Maria Hernandez learned early as a child growing up in San Marcos, Mexico. The gathering of the flowers, grinding pine nuts for mole, the joyous candlelight vigils at the family cemetery, she cherishes those memories. Most of all she holds close the stories of her ancestors.
She has already made the mole, tamales and rice pudding that she adds to her family’s small altar honoring her aunt, grandparents and her in-laws. Even though she claims her husband Jesus is the better cook in the family, she also made food for the Atlanta History Center event, which will have nearly a dozen altars. Last year she helped organize the celebration at Garden Hills Elementary School in Atlanta where one of their three children attends.
It’s fine if her kids want to get in on Halloween fun, but she wants them to appreciate a tradition that ties them to their past.
“It’s not about something scary, it’s about the person you love,” Hernandez said.
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Event preview
Day of the Dead/Dia de los Muertos Celebration at the
The Atlanta History Center, 130 West Paces Ferry Road; noon-5 p.m. today. A citywide event of music, dancing, food, storytelling, and art projects for kids. Event sponsored by the History Center, Instituto de Mexico and the Mexican Consulate General. Free to the public. For more information: 404-814-4000 or www. atlantahistorycenter.com
Rialto Center for the Arts’ Dia de los Muertos Celebration during the First Thursday Downtown Art Walk, 80 Forsyth St. NW, on the corner of Forsyth and Luckie streets; Wednesday, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Folkloric dance company Dance Ando and musical group Mariachi Viva Mexico perform, face painting for kids and adults, and food. Photo realist painter Cesar Placencia of Mexico will be completing one of his works during the event. Exhibition is co-sponsored by No Mas Cantina, the Mexican Consulate General and Instituto de Mexico. Free to the public.
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