Death as a Focus for Joy : More County Areas Celebrating Day of the Dead

Ramon Ramirez, Ana Flores and Rebeca Avalos will be transformed into Batman, a cheerleader and a Gypsy tonight, as they join other tiny ghouls and goblins prowling their neighborhoods for Halloween treats.

But tomorrow, the three second-graders at Jackson Elementary School will set aside the U.S. custom and laugh at death itself during Day of the Dead, a Mexican celebration being observed with more frequency in Orange County as the influx of immigrants continues to grow.

At the same time that the youngsters in teacher Bonnie Alba-Bernal’s class are studying the meaning of the day as part of a course in cultural awareness, bakeries and stores in Latino neighborhoods in Orange County, as well as museums and other cultural places, are setting up displays to mark a holiday meant to remember the dead and celebrate life.

Even though Day of the Dead is not well known among many non-Latinos, its symbols are cropping up in unlikely places. During Oingo Boingo’s annual Halloween performance at Irvine Meadows this weekend, for example, four skeletal musicians in Day of the Dead regalia adorned the stage.

At El Gallo Giro, a Mexican takeout and bakery, employees have set up the traditional Day of the Dead altar with food offerings for the departed and surreal, colorful skeletons that typify the celebration.

“We want to revive the tradition so that it is not completely lost here,” said Pedro J. Matar, manager of the Santa Ana El Gallo Giro store. The store, along with another El Gallo Giro in Huntington Park, is preparing to bake great quantities of pan de muerto , a traditional Day of the Dead bread, to sell Thursday and Friday.

“People come in all the time and ask us what Day of the Dead is,” Matar said. “Many people think it is witchcraft. But it is not. It is a way of communing with the dead. It is a very big day for us.”

Jose Vargas, the officer in charge of Latino affairs for the Santa Ana Police Department, said the Day of the Dead celebration is often one of the first traditions that Mexican immigrants let go, partly because of the impression an American Halloween makes on small children.

He said he can see the Halloween influence even in Tijuana, where children roam the streets in costumes, saying “trick or treat” in English and collecting money.

“They don’t even understand what they’re saying,” he said.

But it is also easy to forget because many immigrants left their dead behind in Mexican cemeteries. Vargas remembered commemorating the day when he was a boy in Mexico but recalled little else about it.

“I knew we celebrated it every year when I was growing up, and we ate the bread, and it was delicious, and I never knew why,” he said. “I just knew that each year my grandmother made the bread, and we ate it for the health of those who were dead.”

Alba-Bernal tells her students that Day of the Dead is no longer celebrated in the more cosmopolitan urban areas of Mexico. It is not an official national holiday or religious holy day, and few other Latin American countries celebrate it to the extent that Mexico does.

“But every culture has some way of remembering the dead,” said Alba-Bernal, who recently helped prepare a Day of the Dead exhibit at the Bowers Museum.

Most of the children in her class were born in Mexico, or they are first-generation American-born. Many of them said their families observed the custom to some extent, or they recalled having done so when they were still in Mexico.

“This gives the kids an idea that even though they’re here, they can bring their traditions with them,” she said. “It makes them feel better, helps them to fit in.”

Far from being macabre or depressing, Day of the Dead is a hauntingly beautiful tradition, Alba-Bernal said, in which the happier days of dead relatives are remembered.

“Day of the Dead is when someone dies, and they celebrate the day,” said Ana Flores, 7. “You shouldn’t be afraid of things because you should celebrate it.”

“It is a happy day because it is the day that someone dies,” said Ramon Ramirez, also 7. “We take pan de muertos to the dead people, and they eat it.”

For many children who live in crime-ridden neighborhoods of Santa Ana, or who have seen family members die in other ways, the ability to deal with death is important, Alba-Bernal said.

Sandra de Jesus, 7, for example, has a younger brother who died of an illness and a sister who died in a car wreck. She was coloring drawings of skeletons dressed as ladies.

“I am not afraid of these drawings because they’re funny,” she said. “If it were a movie, then I might be afraid.”

In some parts of Mexico where it is observed, especially in small towns of the states of Oaxaca and Michoacan, townspeople hold elaborate celebrations that are part Irish wake mixed with a little Christmas cheer.

On Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, a day called All Saints’ Day by some cultures, Mexicans remember the dead with food, song, music, prayer and vigil. They set up elaborate altars in the home, where pictures of the dead are surrounded by candles and food, papier-mache skeletons and yellow marigolds, the flower of death.

Then, on the night of Nov. 1, the family makes a procession to the cemetery, bearing food and other gifts, then spend the entire night at the grave to accompany the spirit of the departed.

“Death is not something to fear in the Hispanic culture,” Alba-Bernal said. “You live and you die, and then you go on to the next life.”

During the two-day celebration, children give each other skulls made of sugar with their names on the forehead. They run around with handmade masks in a ritual similar to Halloween costumes and play with toys that have some sort of figure of death. The adults party and eat lavishly.

The making of the skeletons has been elevated to an art form, with artists from Mexico City to East Los Angeles dressing the figures to resemble certain politicians or other historical figures. They arrange them in satirical scenes with political or social messages.

Alba-Bernal said she does not tell the children about Day of the Dead to make them believe it or to pass on religious ideas. When she started the course, a parent complained that she had a cross on the altar, so she quickly removed it.

She teaches them about Day of the Dead the same way she lets the children know about certain customs in Japan, China or the Middle East.

“We do this to let them know why people are different,” she said. “Hopefully, if they appreciate that in others, that will make a difference in the world when they get older.”