Also called ofrenda, altar de muertos, Día de Muertos altar
A home altar built for the Mexican Day of the Dead, set with photographs, marigolds, candles, water, salt, pan de muerto and the favorite foods of the dead so that their spirits feel welcome when they return on November 1 and 2.
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Take care: Paper decorations and dried flowers burn easily; keep candles well away from them, use battery candles if children or pets are around, and never leave the altar lit unattended.
A common layout uses three levels: the top for photographs of the dead with saints, the Virgin and crucifixes set in a retablo; the second for food and comforts that make the dead feel at home; and the lowest for candles, water and other essentials. Some families build two levels or many more, and the meaning of each level varies by region and household.
In Oaxaca altars often include brightly painted alebrijes and arches of flowers and sugarcane. Michoacán altars feature sugar skulls and papel picado, while on the Veracruz coast families add seashells and fish to honor the sea.
Schools, museums and city squares now build large shared ofrendas, sometimes honoring famous figures or victims of disasters. In the United States they have become a way for Mexican-American families to pass on the custom.
The Day of the Dead blends Indigenous Mesoamerican ways of honoring the dead with the Catholic feasts of All Saints and All Souls on November 1 and 2. Scholars still debate the balance: Spanish friars such as Diego Durán and Bernardino de Sahagún recorded Aztec festivals for the dead, while many details resemble Spanish All Souls customs. Its center is the ofrenda, Spanish for offering, a home altar where the dead are welcomed back as honored guests rather than mourned.
Marigolds, called cempasúchil from Nahuatl, are believed to guide the spirits with their color and scent, and pan de muerto, a sweet bread topped with bone shapes, is baked in the weeks before. In the 20th century the Mexican state promoted the festival as a national symbol, and in 2008 UNESCO added the indigenous festivity dedicated to the dead to its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
A gentle remembrance ritual for someone who has died, drawing on old mourning customs: stopping the clock, covering the mirror, telling the bees and giving the grief a voice. It is a way to honor loss, not to make it disappear.
A meal prepared and eaten in total silence, often backwards, at midnight. In Appalachia and the Ozarks young women set it to see the spirit of their future husband walk in; modern Pagans keep it at Samhain as a quiet supper for the dead.
The old Gaelic start of winter on 31 October to 1 November, kept with bonfires, turnip lanterns, guising, souling for cakes, and divination games. Modern Pagan Samhain rituals for honouring the dead build on these folk customs but are largely a 20th-century reconstruction.
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