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.