October saw the Hackney Wicked Women back in the pub (classic HWW), with a Halloween craft theme. We started out learning loads of fascinating facts from Katherine about the history of Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations, and followed it up with a bit of crafty fun!
Dia de los Muertos is celebrated across Mexico on the 1st and 2nd of November (it’s not really Halloween, it’s more associated with the Catholic celebration of All Souls Day). It’s a joyful celebration, rather than a day of mourning, full of colour and showing love and respect for deceased family members and loved ones – keeping their memories alive.
The centre piece of the celebrations is the family altar, decorated with offerings of food and water, flowers (especially marigolds) and incense. Skulls and skeletons were not a common part of Day of the Dead celebrations until the early 20th century, when political artist Jose Guadalupe Pasada created an etching of a skeleton dressed in traditional fancy French clothing. In 1947 artist Diego Rivera featured a stylised skeleton in his mural “Dream of a Sunday afternoon”. He named her Catrina (slang for the rich) and she is now the most famous image associated with Dia de los Muertos.
The Day of the Dead holiday was recognised in 2008 by UNESCO as an “Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity” (read more about it here).
And top fact – one of the more recent representations of the celebration in the 2015 James Bond film “Spectre”, where thousands of people throng the streets in costume, actually never happened until the film came out. The celebrations are traditionally more based around the family home. However, after Spectre’s release, the people of Mexico City decided it looked like fun and now a parade happens every year!
We then got a bit creative with cute ceramic skull-shaped tealight holders, paint pens and lots of sparkly bits…
Hackney Wicked Women 