This commentary is by Peter DuBrul, a history teacher who lives in Charlotte.
Disney’s 2017 animated film “Coco” introduced millions to the seemingly exotic Day of the Dead. Predictably, Disney faced charges of cultural appropriation, mostly from people with no Mexican ancestry.
Everything from eating corn to wearing socks is cultural appropriation, but in this case the charges were doubly wrong: Day of the Dead has long been celebrated in the United States, hidden in plain sight.
But because of perceived appropriation, every fall, well-meaning activists warn us not to confuse colorful Day of the Dead with boring old Halloween. But we should be confused, because there never was any difference.
It’s not coincidental that Catholic-majority Mexico celebrates Day of the Dead on exactly the same day that Catholics everywhere celebrate — or used to celebrate — All Souls’ Day. Nor is it coincidental that popular Mexican Day of the Dead images are almost indistinguishable from the skulls and skeletons, memento mori, and personified death of historical Catholic art, used since the Dark Ages to remind us that all must die.
Halloween means “All Hallows’ Eve,” with hallow an old word for saint, making Halloween the evening before All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ follows on Nov. 2, the three days together the Hallowmas cycle.
Although terminology might differ — Jour des Morts in France, as one example — for centuries on All Souls’ Catholics everywhere erected home altars, brought food to cemeteries, and ritually begged at tombs or doorways. This continues today in places as far apart as Slavic and southern Europe, the Philippines, and the Andes Mountains, discrediting notions of Aztec or Celtic origins.
If All Souls’ is celebrated less in the English-speaking world, that is simply because Catholicism was nearly erased in the English-speaking world.
And if to you Halloween is nothing more than candy and costumes, that’s not the holiday’s fault. It’s almost a miracle that we celebrate it at all. Since Martin Luther’s day, Protestant reformers exaggerated and flat-out invented pagan links to Catholic holidays. Later, Romantics did the same thing for opposite reasons, imagining a pagan golden age and continuity that never happened.
In 20th-century Mexico, All Souls’ was similarly reinterpreted to erase indisputable Catholic origins, this time by elites hoping to emphasize Aztec heritage and diminish ties to Spain. But Day of the Dead was celebrated in the same ways throughout the old Spanish Empire, far from historic Aztec holdings. And, tellingly, those Mexican elites were themselves descendants of Europeans who brought Catholic holidays.
Today’s deniers of a Catholic Day of the Dead are also largely European-descended, seemingly seeking atonement for the introduction of Christianity and, in particular, Catholicism, to the New World. But if Catholic Christianity was the problem, why then in Catholic-majority countries do so many Native Americans survive, and so many millions still speak Native American languages?
Compare historically Protestant-majority lands such as the U.S. — especially the Eastern U.S. — to historically Catholic-majority lands. It’s not even close: While you can hear Native American languages spoken by native speakers in urban New Jersey, New York, and even in rural Vermont, they’re not speaking Abenaki. They’re speaking Nahuatl or Mixtec, from the other side of modern boundaries.
For all the sins of colonial Catholics, it was never church policy or intention to exterminate Native Americans. Thus, 90 percent of Mexicans are wholly or partially descended from Native Americans, and most other countries in Catholic America have similarly high numbers, an enormous contrast with Protestant-majority lands. But persistent religiosity in what we view as a secular age is why many Indigenous people still celebrate Day of the Dead — not an imaginary link to a pagan past.
Like many in the rich world, I gave up the faith upon reaching legal adulthood. Years passed with hardly a thought to Christian myths or repressive Catholic ethics. But one day I passed a pretty little church, built in the Romanesque style, and had a sudden and odd idea: I would go inside. Embarrassed to myself, I quickly brushed the thought away; the church was empty and surely would be locked. But, by the intervention of some unknown saint, it wasn’t locked, and I entered.
Before long I began attending weekday masses, with no one there but a few octogenarians too deaf and blind to notice an apostate secularist sitting in the back. I hung an icon of Our Lady of Czestochowa on an eastern wall in our house, to my wife’s eyerolls. I carved a small cross and strung it with 59 beads, to more eyerolls. I surprised myself by teaching our children Catholic prayers — and they surprised me by actually learning them.
But a bigger surprise came last fall, after my mother died. All Souls’ fell on a weekday and I went to mass. But upon entering I blinked in astonishment — there were people in the church! There were many people in the church! The church was so crowded that my customary spot in the back half-hidden by a column was taken. But I genuflected and squeezed into another pew.
It was the Day of the Dead, and the dead were remembered.
Sources
—Robin Lane Fox, “Pagans and Christians” (London: Penguin, 1986)
—Stanley Brandes, “Day of the Dead, Halloween, and the Quest for Mexican National Identity,” The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 111, No. 442 (Autumn 1998), pp. 359 -380
—Douglas Holms, “All Souls’ Day,” The Irish Monthly, Vol. 58, No. 449 (Nov. 1910)
