Halloween Days

Day 1: Prepare your ofrenda.

I tagged along with one our museum program managers to the El Burrito Mercado in West St. Paul yesterday. She was on the search for items to include in the History Center's Dias de Los Muertos Celebracion (Day of the Dead celebration) planned for Sunday, October 28, 1 to 4 pm. The event includes a display of ofrendas designed by students from the Guadalupe Alternative Programs in St. Paul and a special ofrenda installation by artist Armando Gutiérrez. Gutiérrez will also lead visitors as they create their own unique ofrendas. Play "Day of the Dead Loteria," a Mexican-style bingo game, see a sugar skull-making demonstration, enjoy Mexican folkloric dancing with Los Alegres Bailadores, and hear traditional music performed by Pedro Torres and his eight-piece mariachi group Flor y Canto.

The Day of the Dead is a Mexican holday that remembers and honors friends and family who have died and is celebrated over two days, November 1 (All Saints Day) and November 2 (All Souls Day).

El Burrito Mercado this year has set up an ofrenda in the front of their market and our manager Wendy, along with managers from the market, taught me about the altar.

I was born right across the border from Juarez, Mexico, in El Paso, Texas, and I worked with and lived near Mexican migrants when I was a teen, so I have some of that Mexican heritage with me. My parents live in the Rio Grande Valley in the winter months and right next to the airport I fly into is a huge cemetery with large-scale Stations of the Cross, and in preparation for the Day of the Dead many of the Mexican Americans will decorate all the railings and fencing and headstones with large, brightly colored plastic flowers. And then many take their lunches to the cemetery and have large family picnics there all day, sitting among the tombstones, eating tamales and drinking Pepsi Colas.


The Burrito Mercado ofrenda included a large tray filled with all the good things that go into traditional Mexican cooking (the pic above isn't from the Mercado but is a good example of a typical ofrenda):

a bowl of dry rice
dried chilis
some bay leaves
a cactus fruit (or tuna verde)
some tomatillos
cloves and sesame seeds in small dishes
an onion and a garlic

and then scattered around the big tray are sugar and wax candy skulls and papier-mache skeletons, and a few of the favorite things a loved one might have enjoyed, in this case, chocolate and cigarettes and a deck of cards.


(An artist's ofrenda, from http://www.storyboardtoys.com/)

I brought all my wares home, pulled out my big yellow pottery bowl, and set up my little ofrenda. We gringos aren't big on home altars unless it involves Jesus or scrapbooking. But I think this is just right. My departed Papa liked war movies and unfiltered cigarettes and my Grandma liked Grain Belt beer. My father-in-law liked sweets and my dear cousins each liked sushi and Coke. So I'm off to Walgreens and the liquor store now for my all-purpose remembrance. I hope my son doesn't get the idea I'm setting out all these items for a teen fest Saturday night sleepover.