Category Archives: Day of the Dead

Christmas in October

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For the eighteen years I’ve lived in Mexico, I have watched Halloween taking over the imaginations of kids here to the point where its displays far-exceed those of Day of the Dead in Walmart. Many rue this tendency, but Day of the Dead still remains the more authentic and widely-celebrated holiday for adults and I both buy bags of candy to contribute to our yearly distribution to kids at the gate of the Raquet Club and construct a Day of the Dead altar honoring my husband, parents, friends and pets who have died.

This year, the displays of bagged Halloween candy, costumes and jack-o-lanterns was the largest I’d ever seen here and luckily, I bought my Halloween candy early, for when I returned ten days before Halloween to buy more bags for friends who are in the states and who wanted me to buy bags for them to contribute to the give-away, the huge Halloween displays in Walmart had vanished, replaced by storewide Christmas decorations!  I took these photos of the trees going up, and the next day at least six big sections were filled with Xmas decorations. Today I went back to buy a curtain rod and found this one little sad abandoned jack-o-lantern hidden away on a box in the Xmas display. What is wrong with us that we can’t even celebrate one October holiday before shoving it aside for Xmas? Pretty soon it will be Easter it is shoving aside. 

Please click on first photo to enlarge all.

R.I.P. (JNW’s Halloween Challenge, Graveyard)

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Last year, I did a post about a neglected gravesite that I adopted, cleared and decorated.  Yesterday, I went back to check on it and this is what I found:

(Click on photos to enlarge and read captions.)

It took me a long time to find this site as it had once again been thoroughly taken over by castor bean trees and other native weeds. Some of the cornerstones had crumbled as well.
It just one place, I could see enough of a headstone to make out the name.
A lantana tree had found a home here
as had a vivid morning glory vine.

I guess I have my work cut out for me again this year, although underneath the volunteer foliage, I made out the much-enlarged forms of aloe plants I planted last year.  Perhaps I’ll find some of the sun roses, as well, once I’ve cleared away a bit.

I had made the mistake of coming in through the front entrance of this large graveyard, and since the plot I adopted last year was at the very back, it was hard work finding my way back uphill through the maze of graves back to my car. Time and again, I came to a dead end, my way blocked by a huge crypt or fenced off area. There seem to be no clearly defined paths, but on my circuitous way back, I came upon this little grave even bleaker in its surroundings than that of my adopted departeds, although marked by a Virgin of Guadalupe that was beautifully patinaed by age:

The prompt today is “graveyard.”