Discovery Atlas - Mexico: Day of the Dead

Get more at http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/atlas/atlas.html Some of the most elaborate Day of the Dead celebrations take place in Cuanajo, Mexico.

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[enriquemayenzavala]

this is one of our more ancient traditions, more than 3000 years ago this celebration exist, we are not crazy.

[mhaxt]

en Ecuador tenemos el dia de los muertos, pero no lo celebramos haci, solo visitamos las tumbas y rezamos, en mexico es algo mas serio, y muy bonito,In ecuador we have the day of the dead, but is not like this, we only visit the tombs of our dead family, and we pray, but we dont eat food or something like that, but this is a very nice ritual, sorry for my poor english, i love Mexican culture

[ublazzz]

@enriquemayenzavala Haha I'm trying to tell my friends that I'm not crazy too and we have the same thing today by the catholics and my friends tell me that we are in 2011 so I showed them this video.

[alexacrow]

@tangas1530 it is actually a MEXICA tradition called Miccailhuitontli.

[alexacrow]

@MrPmd1 No ofense, but you know nothing about this celebration. Day of the Dead comes from a very ancient festivity called Miccailhuitontli that Mexica's use to celebrate honoring the gods of the dead who lived in Mictlan, This, I repeat, is a very ancient tradition that has nothing to do with Catholicism or Europe. The Spanish people brought the "All hollows eve" tradition, that's why the day of the dead was "moved" to november, so the convertion of the people to the catholicism was easier.

[enriquemayenzavala]

@MrPmd1 about the beginning of August, and was celebrated for an entire month. The festivities were dedicated to the god known as the "Lady of the Dead", corresponding to the modern Catrina."

Some evidence point that in fact the celebration is very very old, in excavations in the maya zone or olmec zone there evidence of this celebrations about 3000 b.c.

[enriquemayenzavala]

@MrPmd1

Also you can see in wikipedia "The Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico can be traced back to the indigenous cultures. Rituals celebrating the deaths of ancestors have been observed by these civilizations perhaps for as long as 2,500–3,000 years. In the pre-Hispanic era, it was common to keep skulls as trophies and display them during the rituals to symbolize death and rebirth.

The festival that became the modern Day of the Dead fell in the ninth month of the Aztec calendar.

[enriquemayenzavala]

@MrPmd1 extract from the Encyclopædia Britannica Article: "Día de los Muertos holiday in Mexico, also observed to a lesser extent in other areas of Latin America and in the United States, honouring dead loved ones and making peace with the eventuality of death by treating it familiarly, without fear and dread. The holiday is derived from the rituals of the pre-Hispanic peoples of Mexico. Led by the goddess Mictecacihuatl, known as “Lady of the Dead,”

[sotoj159]

@Mrdeftoness1 how do you know?

[ozvulcan]

@Mrdeftoness1 No Christianity is wrong, Paganism predates it by 10,000 years or more. Not to mention Christianity is nothing more than a plagiarized version of earlier pagan religions.

[Mrdeftoness1]

PAGANISM IS WRONG!

[99cacahuate]

this tradition is about 5000 years old, the term AZTEC was made up by Alexander Von Huntbold and was used collectively to describe all the people who were connected to the triple alliance and the state. We are mexica, pronounce ( Meh-she-kah )