Day of the Dead: Google Doodle celebrates Mexican holiday “Día de los Muertos 2020”

Google Doodle celebrates a Mexican annual holiday “Day of the Dead 2020” (“Día de los Muertos 2020”) on November 2.

The Day of the Dead is Mexico’s annual day celebrated in Mexico and somewhere else related to the Catholic celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos), is a Mexican holiday where families welcome back the souls of their deceased relatives for a concise get-together that incorporates food, drink, and celebration. A mix of Mesoamerican custom, European religion, and Spanish culture, the holiday is praised every year from October 31-November 2. While October 31 is Halloween, November 1 is “Dia de los Inocentes,” or the day of the children, and All Saints Day. November 2 is All Souls Day or the Day of the Dead. As indicated by tradition, the gates of paradise are opened at midnight on October 31 and the souls of children can rejoin their families for 24 hours. The souls of adults can do likewise on November 2.

Read More: All Souls’ Day: What is Day of the Dead? Why is the Commemoration of the Faithful Departed celebrated?

The origins of the Day of the Dead, celebrated in contemporary Mexico and among those of Mexican heritage in the United States and around the globe, return approximately 3,000 years, to the rituals respecting the dead in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. The Aztecs and other Nahua individuals living in what is currently central Mexico held a cyclical perspective on the universe and considered demise to be a fundamental, ever-present part of life.

After dying, an individual was believed to travel to Chicunamictlán, the Land of the Dead. Simply in the wake of traversing nine challenging levels, a journey of several years, could the individual’s soul, at last, arrive at Mictlán, the last resting place. In Nahua customs respecting the dead, traditionally held in August, relatives gave food, water, and tools to help the deceased in this troublesome journey. This inspired the contemporary Day of the Dead practice wherein individuals to leave food or different offerings on their friends and family’s graves or set them out on makeshift altars called ofrendas in their homes.

The holiday is sometimes called Día de los Muertos in Anglophone nations, a back-interpretation of its original Mexican name, Día de Muertos. While in Spain and most of Latin America the public holiday and comparable customs are typically held on All Saints’ Day (Todos los Santos), the Mexican government under Cardenas changed the celebration to All Souls’ Day (Fieles Difuntos) with an end goal to secularize the festivity and recognize it from the Hispanic Catholic celebration.

The Dia de Muertos was then promoted all through the nation as a continuity of antiquated Aztec celebrations honoring death, a theory firmly energized by Mexican poet Octavio Paz. Traditions associated with the holiday incorporate building home altars called ofrendas, honoring the deceased using Calaveras, Aztec marigolds, and the most loved foods and drinks of the left, and visiting graves with these as gifts. Guests likewise leave possessions of the expired at the graves.