What to Know About Mexico’s Day of the Dead
This is a reflective holiday.
Neither joyous nor somber, per se, the Day of the Dead is about remembering loved ones who have passed on, and “a time of reflection,” says Téllez. “There’s definitely peace associated with the feelings of remembering people, remembering your family, and connecting with your current family members or your friends.”
There are a ton of flowers involved.
The thing that surprised Téllez most when she arrived in Mexico City is how vibrant the city became—“so beautiful and sensual”—this time of year thanks to the bevy of flowers that popped up at the market and even in traffic medians. Flowers are a huge part of the celebration, and she saw trucks filled to the brim with marigolds, one of the two traditional flowers along with dark-red, crushed-velvet like terciopelo.
Home altars play a big role.
Those sugar skulls, flowers, and other decorations are intended for home altars, which most of Téllez’s friends had in their homes along with photographs of the deceased, candles, and papel picado, a perforated paper that might be engraved with skeletons. If your relative had a particular favorite food, such as enchiladas, you might be able to find a tiny sugar figurine of enchiladas for sale, and could add that to your altar.
Dia de los Muertos Celebratory Foods Vary Throughout Mexico.
In Mexico City, the typical snack sold at bakeries and supermarkets during this time is called pan de muerto, “bread of the dead,” a puffed, sugar-dusted, orange-flavored bread. In the city, it is often dome-shaped with “little knobby parts,” says Téllez, but you might also spy some loaves that “are shaped like a little dead person, flattened, with its arms crossed.” If you visit someone’s home and they have the loaves, you’ll likely eat it with hot chocolate. In other parts of Mexico, tamales and atole—“where there are tamales, there’s always atole,” laughs Téllez—a hot corn- or masa-based drink, might be on offer. In the state of Oaxaca, land of the seven moles, the labor-intensive mole negro, a special dish reserved for weddings and funerals, will make a cameo.
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