Día de Muertos Reminds Christians To Grieve

I am not interested in a commercialized version of Día de Muertos; parades, concerts, and celebrations where I must buy a ticket are an invention of capitalism. I am interested in the family remembrance rituals, in the nights at the cemetery communing with loved ones, in the ofrendas set up in homes, schools, and public plazas.

Traditionally, Día de Muertos means walking through the streets smelling the fragrant scent of calabaza en tacha, the freshness of mandarins, the herbaceous and bitter scent of cempaxóchitl flowers — the scent of death. It’s tasting the once-a-year delicacy of pan de muerto, finding the names of deceased loved ones in calaveritas de azúcar and chocolate. I often dig out a sepia-toned copy of my abuelitos’ wedding picture and search for a picture where my great-grandma’s long, white, braided hair shows below her veil. I update my list of remembrance with the names of loved ones who passed this year, spending a few minutes savoring their memory, searching for a good picture that would do justice to their character and self-presentation on the ofrenda, and thinking of a few items they would enjoy having on their remembrance altar.

Western Protestant Christianity mourns fast. It dislikes grief. Verses that that say not to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) are often interpreted as guideposts to limit the length and depth of grief. We forget there are also verses like Psalm 34:18, where God “is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” The requirement here is that we are broken-hearted and crushed in spirit, that is, we carry the spirit of death. Growing up, we honored the death of my abuelita with a Mass followed by nine communal prayer sessions, and then a Mass once every month for the first year, and then a Mass once a year on the anniversary of her passing. Part of our grief was continuing to express love that we did not get to give. Día de Muertos is another opportunity to nourish the relationships we hold dearly.

Día de Muertos can also have a prophetic touch, shedding light on the horrors of current events, reminding the rich, powerful, and abusive that death is our common experience. In Mexico, calaveritas do just that. These satirical poems written every year around Día de Muertos express what is wrong with the status quo. There is no official format, but they often include an encounter with the personification of death, humor, and an unexpected ending. Many of these poems mock the unethical acts of political figures, oppressive policies, or the extravagant practices of the rich. They equalize our humanity and help people exert their agency by reminding the subjects of the poem that all of us will have an encounter with death. The personification of death as la flaca, la huesuda, or la catrina often questions the choices a person or system is making, demands an explanation for abuses committed, or somehow comes to hold people accountable for their oppressive ways.

Día de Muertos is rich and complex. It is both personal and communal, religious and political. It honors our loved ones and mourns the multiplicity of deaths surrounding us, from job losses, to war “casualties,” to dead democracies. It’s a set of rituals and practices that help us, as my late mentor Karen Virtue use to say, “deal with the gap between the ideal and the real.” She called that gap grief and taught me grieving is one of the most critical skills a person can learn. Unexpressed grief can come out in destructive ways. Día de Muertos creates a container for filling the gap between our longing for a just world where no one is afraid and everyone has what they need, and the realities of our voracious world where countries amass riches and frighten people with weapons while depriving them of food and water.

Rituals like the ones in Día de Muertos hold us together. They give structure to seasons and transitions in life. They give us language when we don’t have any and serve as anchors to our experiences.

This year I am imagining what it would be like to build an altar to the children of Palestine and Israel. I would curate it with one of my Palestinian friends. She would curiously agree though she would have lots of questions. I would want to use a black and white keffiyeh as a tablecloth and she would tell me she has a better idea and pull out a woven cloth from her heirloom sewn by Palestinian hands. We would list the names of children whose stories we found in our Instagram feeds and print their pictures when they were alive and smiling and well. We would wrestle with how to portray the children whose names we don’t know and whose stories were buried under the rubble; I suspect we’d land on lighting candles, using one of those stands like the ones in Catholic churches. Rather than use a candle for each child — and risk filling up a small space with carbon monoxide from hours of burning — each candle would represent 100 children who have died. We would make shulbato, falafel, some hummus, and labneh dressed in dried mint and drizzled with olive oil. We would set the pan de muerto next to a clay mug filled with karawiyah — the scent of caraway and orange mingling, evoking the Levantine postpartum dish that likely once nourished the children’s mothers. We would add the keffiyeh to hold the extra colorful tiny calaveritas. My friend would wonder what her community might think of this, and I would wonder the same. She would open her hands and pray. We would drink tea together.

This year, I am interested in us holding on to our humanity, as Sikh peace activist and filmmaker Valarie Kaur called us to. For me, entering the rituals of Día de Muertos is one way I do that. The gap between the ideal and the real is too vast, too deep, and the need to begin mending it begins with grieving.

Editor’s note: In accordance with the author’s preferences, we have not italicized non-English words. For an example of why some Latine authors prefer not to italicize Spanish words in their English writing, click here.