Communities celebrate Day of Dead

MOUNT VERNON — Bernadina Luna remembers growing up in Southern Mexico, where she celebrated the Day of the Dead by visiting the cemetery where her great grandparents and other loved ones were buried.

Luna and her family placed candles, candy, bread and fruit at the grave sites. The adults served a soup made of rice and fish, Luna said, speaking through a Spanish-speaking interpreter.

The entire community came to the cemetery to remember friends and family who had died at a celebration that is both melancholy and joyous, she said.

"They'd drink beer, too," Luna said. "They had a band to dance to all day."

In Skagit County, where Luna lives now, celebrations of the Day of the Dead or El Dia de los Muertos are often in people's homes or at a few churches.

Western communities from Tucson, Ariz., to Missoula, Mont., celebrate El Dia de los Muertos with parades, parties and church services. The holiday that originated in Mexico blends All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day with the Mexican indigenous cultures' celebration of dead spirits. The celebration's roots date back to the Aztec and Mayan cultures.

Luna and fellow parishioners of La Iglesia Episcopal de la Resurreccion, an Episcopal congregation, observed El Dia de los Muertos at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Mount Vernon over the weekend.

"These are all days where we're present to the fact that our loved ones are still with us," said the Rev. Josefina Beecher, the priest of La Iglesia Episcopal de la Resurreccion. "We celebrate the fact that they have gone to Heaven and are with God."

Luna carefully trimmed the marigolds Friday, cutting away any brown leaves and bundling them into small bouquets for the altar. Some years, she makes the soup she grew up with, using turkey instead of fish.

In Burlington, West View Elementary School's PTA combined Halloween with El Dia de los Muertos for the first time at a celebration Friday night.

The school's teachers instruct in both English and Spanish, and 68 percent of the students are Latino, according to state data.

In previous years, the children carved pumpkins, but the PTA wanted to try something different this year. The Day of the Dead was a natural choice for a school with a majority Latino population, said Faviola Lopez, a PTA member who organized the celebration.

Lopez's family members have told her what celebrations were like in Mexico.

"We were told that on Nov. 1 and 2, they would go to the graveyards and have a picnic and spend the day there," said Lopez, whose parents were born in America. "Here, kids like to dress up for Halloween."

Children dressed as ghosts, tigers, warriors and princesses, munched on hot dogs and chips, had their faces painted, and made beads from paper. They pasted colored tissue paper on baby-food jars to make votive candle holders to place on altars at home.

Lopez said she hoped the school's celebration Friday would give students, regardless of where they were born, a chance to enjoy both holidays.

Joey Wasson, a Burlington resident who has one of her three children attending West View, said that she and her children valued both holidays.

"We're living in a multicultural society, and I want my kids to know that and be enriched by this experience," Wasson said.