Halloween & Día de los Muertos

Halloween is not celebrated in Guatemala, but last Wednesday night, we carved jack-o-lanterns anyway! Kate and I bought the closest thing to pumpkins: green-and-white-speckled "chayotes" that are just like pumpkins except for their color, taste, and thickness. Kate lives with a host family that has 13 children (that's an aggregate count, because in Guatemala many people live with their extended family, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.) so Kate had the idea to share our Halloween traditions with all the kids. They loved it! They have only ever seen jack-o-lanterns on TV, and they were so excited to be carving their own and learning about the holiday.

The chayotes were difficult to carve, especially the taller ones. The meat was very thick, and it took a lot of huffing and puffing to get the knives through. Angel, Kate's host-father, is a carpenter, so after much grunting and straining on our part, he decided to help us out and got out his electric saw!

Angel and the kids, hard at work.

Jennifer and Davíd helped out by picking out the seeds for toasting.

In Guatemala, pumpkin seeds are prepared by soaking them in lime juice and salt and letting them dry in the sun... delicious! All in all, the night was a big hit, especially with the kids, who kept jumping up and down, shouting, "Happy Halloween! Happy Halloween!" in their limited, bashful, giggly English.

The next day, we got to experience a Guatemalan holiday, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), which is celebrated on November 1st (All Saints' Day) and November 2nd (All Souls' Day). During these two days, it is believed that the spirits of the deceased come back to wander the earth.

According to my research on Wikipedia and Mundo Maya Online, Día de los Muertos celebrations can be traced back to various Mesoamerican indigenous peoples, including the Maya. Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by these civilizations for as long as 2,500 to 3,000 years.

The Maya have incorporated many Spanish customs and Catholic holidays (in this case, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day) into their ancient traditions and ceremonies. Día de los Muertos celebrations are just one example of this mixture of Catholic and Mayan religious traditions.During the period of November 1st and November 2nd, families go together to the town cemetery to apply a fresh coat of brightly-colored paint to their family gravestones and mausoleums (just as the girl is doing in the photo above), and decorate the graves with flowers (often marigolds), pine needles, and streamers (see the photo below). Families will also often bring a food offering with them to the cemetery, so they can eat a meal with the spirits who are present on earth during these days. Many people believe that the spirits of the dead eat the "spiritual essence" of the food, so that even though the family members are eating the food, they believe it lacks nutritional value.One popular food item prepared on this day is “chuchitos,” (meat and sauce wrapped in corn meal and banana leaves and then boiled, much like Mexican tamales). Another dish, “fiambre,” the traditional dish of the festival, is made only once a year. Although recipes vary from family to family, fiambre is usually a mix of cheese, meat, and vegetables cured in vinegar. Another Día de los Muertos tradition in Guatemala is flying “barriletes” (kites) made of crepe paper and bamboo. In the photo above, you can see a young girl selling kites on the market street, just outside of the cemetary. On November 1st and 2nd, families fly kites high above the cemetery or their houses as a symbolic link between the living and the dead.Finally, on the night of November 1st, children and youth roam the streets in costumes, much like our Halloween. The interesting differences, though, are that all costumes are extremely scary, and instead of asking for candy at each house, they ask for "güisquil" (pronounced "wee-skeel"), a boiled, gourd-like vegetable!