Every year in Spanish class, we study the Day of the Dead. Some years we just talk about it; others we watch videos. It's become part of late October. But this year our teacher, who is Puerto Rican, decided we were going to celebrate it. We all researched it and she brought in some books about the holiday.

Los Dias de los Muertos are celebrated on October 31, November 1, and November 2. The holiday is based around All Saints' Day, November 1st, and has the same origins as Halloween. It's celebrated to some extent throughout Latin America, but it's biggest in Mexico. Before October 31, families build little altars in kitchens or living rooms. The altars are decorated with linens, flowers, religious pictures, candles, and paper friezes. Each altar is dedicated to a dead person who was important to the family, usually a relative. A picture of the dead person to be honored is placed on the altar, along with things they enjoyed. Cooking utensils and a shawl might be placed on a woman's altar, or a hat and cooking tools for a man. If the person was a musician, their instrument might be there. The family leaves the person's favorite foods and a special bread on the altar, too.

The belief that the boundary between the dead and alive is thinnest on October 31st can be found all over European folklore. The British tradition of jack o' lanterns and costumes were originally ways to scare away bad ghosts. In modern times these traditions are all that remain of the holiday, ignoring the tradition of welcoming friendly spirits on this night. In Mexico, the Day of the Dead is not a frightening holiday, but a time to welcome ancestors back into the home to enjoy things they enjoyed in life. It's a time to honor missed family and remember the good things about them. We think of death as a scary, depressing thing, but this holiday isn't a sad time at all. In the picture books we saw, the thing that struck me was how happy everyone looked. The people buying flowers and little skeleton figures in the marketplace were laughing. The children clustered around their grandmother's altar were grinning at the camera. People write funny poems about the dead and leave them on the altar. If you don't write one, it's considered that you don't really love the dead person.

The Spanish teachers got permission to use an empty classroom for the week, and every Spanish student in the school had to bring in a picture of a dead person and write a poem about them. We set up tables in the back of the room for an altar and covered it in tablecloths. My teacher brought in electric candles, the kind people put in their windows at Christmastime. My class is first period, so on Wednesday we helped set it up.

That night I went home and made my own. I liked the holiday and especially the idea of honoring one's family, and I wanted to make an altar. I cleared off my dresser and made one there. I went looking though the old photographs for pictures of my grandmother's family and framed all I could find. Now on my dresser there is my great grandmother in a long white Edwardian dress holding the hand of a little girl (my grandmother.) My great grandmother in the thirties on the lawn with her three sisters. My grandmother, her parents, her uncle, and her brother standing on the front porch. I covered the dressertop in a white linen tablecloth I got at a yardsale years ago. I found all the things that belonged to them or that I associated with them: some mismatched cufflinks, a teacup commemorating Queen Elizabeth's coronation, a doily one of them made, the gold locket my grandmother had when she was little. I used my favorite candlesticks and cream-colored candles. The whole scene is very pretty. I don't know what their favorite foods were, but I lit the candles made them a cup of tea on Halloween before I went to Christine's.

When I helped set up the altar Wednesday morning, it looked like some tables with electric candles on them. When I came into the room Friday morning, it looked like an altar to the beloved dead. The tables were full of photographs and offerings. There were all kinds of food: cupcakes, bread, candy bars, bagels, a lemon pound cake. One entire wall was covered in pictures and poems. There were candles and a vase of flowers and pictures of the Virgin. There was even a corner for dead pets.

Some people were more serious about it than others. One girl brought in pictures of herself. Another wrote a poem about her goldfish, accompanied by a drawing of the dearly departed being flushed down the toilet. Some people thought the idea of making an altar to anything was way too weird and didn't participate. But most people brought in a photo of someone we cared about or admired. Most of us did our grandparents. Some did Mahatma Ghandi, JFK, Aaliyah, and John Lennon. Adam made a seperate altar for his cat, complete with two cans of tuna and a toy mouse. "Te queremos, gata tonta," finished his poem. "We love you, stupid cat." The altar was covered in framed pictures: a couple on their wedding day, a woman in a black Edwardian dress, a man and a little girl in a white dress, a young woman holding a cat, a man in naval uniform. The little girl is my mother, and the man was her father.

The things people brought in for their relatives were especially interesting. There was a softball and a fishing rod and an Aaron Copland songbook. The teacher brought a locket with her mother's picture in it. Amy brought a box of matza ball soup mix for her grandmother. Someone tacked a plastic baggie full of chips to the bulletin board. I brought a packet of pipe cleaners, the white cotton kind my grandfather always used to clean his pipe. I hardly remember him, but I will always associate him with those cotton pipe cleaners.

The Spanish class mostly stayed in the room and did nothing Friday, but some of us gravitated toward the room, softly lit with its electric candles. We stood around and read the poems and quietly looked at the offerings. It was beautiful. When I came in to put the pipe cleaners on the altar, I was the only one there. I had an Italian lullaby my choir is singing running through my head, and it occurred to me that a better offering would be to sing it. My grandfather was quite a musician and he was always proud of my mother's voice, so I sang it. I don't know if he was capable of hearing it or if he enjoyed it, but I did. Any commemoration of the dead should be just as much for the living.

October 18
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