Día de los Muertos

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Girl wearing Día de los Muertos makeup in Mexico City

My inner eight-year-old is smiling wide these days. Never would I have imagined making it to Mexico City for Día de los Muertos, but I finally did. It was everything I thought it would be and then some.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to darker things. They were always more interesting to me. I think it started when I was five or six and would sneak downstairs to watch British Hammer horror films and the Roger Corman and Vincent Price adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe. Some of my earliest childhood memories are of racing home from school to catch The Munsters or The Addams Family. Wednesday Addams was my first schoolboy crush.

All of this eventually led to Mexico City and the chance to experience Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — for myself. Families and friends come together to remember those who have died, creating altars, visiting graves and sharing memories, food and stories. The atmosphere can be colourful, funny and joyful rather than sombre because remembering the dead is also a way of celebrating their lives.

This is not Halloween! I repeat, this is not Halloween. Although, amusingly, in the day or two afterward I did see children going from house to house asking for candy.

Death at the end of a life well lived should be a celebration. Your dead loved ones still exist in your memories. You keep them alive. I think I’ve always been drawn to Día de los Muertos because those ideas are at the heart of the celebration.

The video and photographs below certainly confirmed that for me. It was a happy and joyous occasion, full of humour, laughter and loads of smiling faces. I was 100% in — and so happy to finally be there that I welled up a few times.

Parade Video

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