Shedding Light on Day of the Dead : Latinos: Dia de los Muertos promotes the idea that the deceased can offer something to the living.

Marylee Montano hopes that someday county residents will become a little more acquainted with the dead.

Montano’s wish is not an expression of ghoulishness but comes from a sincere belief that friends and loved ones who have died may still have something to offer the living.

That belief is the basis for Dia de los Muertos, a Mexican holiday that is being observed with increasing frequency in Southern California’s Latino communities.

Areas such as East Los Angeles, Pasadena and Ventura County have established parades and other festive events to commemorate Day of the Dead, but the holiday has gained less of a foothold in Orange County.

But Montano hopes that workshops, such as one offered Saturday by the Laguna Art Museum, will help to educate county residents of all cultures.

The workshop drew a small group of children and adults who got a chance to learn about the special symbols and art objects used in Day of the Dead ceremonies and to make personal offerings.

Another workshop is scheduled Saturday at the Laguna museum’s South Coast Plaza outlet from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

M.A. Greenstein, the museum’s curator of education, said the workshops are a bid to address the needs of a swiftly changing community.

“The demographics are changing, and that is especially visible in the schools,” Greenstein said. “The museum has an interest in finding the most effective ways to reach out to a community that right now is in a learning curve.”

Dia de los Muertos is a tradition that “celebrates and honors the past,” Montano said. “And when we honor the past, we honor the future. That’s something of benefit to all cultures.”

Montano, an art educator who has worked extensively in schools, said it is especially important that children learn to express their feelings about life and death and to accept each state as a natural extension of the other.

She told the story of a little girl who, when told that offerings of food are part of the tradition, wanted to know why the food would not just “fall through the skeletons.”

Other children have expressed fear at the tiny papier-mache skeletons that depict the deceased.

“Children are afraid of these things, because adults have taught them to be afraid,” Montano said.

Over three days, beginning about Nov. 1, family and friends gather at the grave sites of the dead to clean tombstones, plant new flowers and build sometimes-elaborate altars that honor the departed.

The observance features music, dancing, offerings of fruits, pan de muerto (bread of the dead) and colorful masks, flowers and calacas --tiny figurines that depict the deceased engaged in activities for which they were best known.

In the little Mexican villages where Day of the Dead traditions are strongest, residents have come to specialize in different aspects of the ceremony, including the making of breads, tableaux, candies, paper flowers and special incense, Montano said.