Compare And Contrast Essay On The Day Of The Dead

Skulls, ghost, masks, and skeletons are symbols seen every year during two famous holidays, Dias de los Muertos and Halloween. There are many people who think Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is the same celebration as Halloween, just the Mexican Version. Is it though? By looking at the celebrations of Dias de los Muertos and Halloween, and their background, then comparing and contrasting each one, an obvious difference will be seen.

First is the history of Halloween all according to a 2017 article from LiveScience by Benjamin Radford. Around 2,000 years ago in the United Kingdom Ireland, and the northern part of France the people called the Celts started this holiday. They called it Samhain back then instead of Halloween. November 1st marked their new year which resulted in them celebrating on October 31st. The New Year brought wintertime which to them meant death. On the night before winter which was October 31st, they believe that the spirits of the Dead came back. They wore costumes, put on bonfires, burned crops and sacrificed animals. When the Romans

I. Attention getting device: When most people think of how to honor the dead, right away they think of mourning but the indigenous people of Mexico had a different idea. Instead of mourning, they think of honoring the dead as a celebration with dancing, food, and reminiscing. The name of this celebration is called Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead in English.

Halloween is a fun, worldwide holiday. Today, Halloween, for children, is going out onto the streets and roaming from house to house asking for, mainly, candy. For adults, Halloween could mean parties, or handing out things to the children, or spending time with family. A similar holiday to Halloween, Day of the Dead. Day of the Dead is mainly limited to hispanic culture, however it has started to spread in more recent years. During Day of the Dead families create altars to attract and guide loved ones to their home, and the afterlife. Día de los Muertos consists of many community-wide celebrations, and parties. During Day of the Dead many people will dress up as skeletons and parade the streets of their community. These holidays might

Foreigners have more trouble understanding Dia de Los Muertos than any of Mexico's other celebrations. At first glance, they see Day of the Dead decorations which are colored paper garlands, little skeletons performing daily tasks and sugar skulls inscribed with names, which remind them of Halloween. Other tourists discover that much like Memorial or Remembrance Day in the US, families here visit, clean and decorate graves of loved ones for the

Halloween is praised on October 31 in a few nations. It has its roots in agnostic festivals for the end of the harvest season, different celebrations of the dead. Day of the Dead (or Dia de los Muertos) is a Mexican occasion, additionally celebrated in parts of Latin America and the U.S., to recall and appeal to God for family and companions who have kicked the bucket. It is on November 1.The Latin American festival Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is praised amid the same time period as Halloween. Both occasions are focused on conventions established in recognizing the perished. Albeit for the most part diverse, a couple of attributes of both occasions make them comparable - clarifying why disarray between the two exist. Halloween and Day of the Dead are both celebrated between people who are in the Christianity culture.

Halloween and Dia de los Muertos have different ways to celebrate their holidays. First of all Halloween is only one day while the Day of the Dead is actually three days. Halloween takes place on October 31st which at night is when people trick or treat. The reason by trick or treating is from an old story that was told that you should go to house to house asking for goods to scare away the bad souls which started reflecting on all the scary decorations during the holiday. While the Day of the Dead is October 31st-November 2nd which all the days reflect on the people who passed on and to celebrate life. People respect and have a meal at their incense grave sites with the souls that are good and that are now passed on to a better place.

On Dia de los Muertos, the people who celebrate this holiday celebrate death. The Mexicans and Central Americans who celebrate Dia de los Muertos think that death is just another part of life, and that the people who die go to the afterlife. During Dia de los Muertos, the families of the loved ones who’ve died will create an altar for the dead person’s spirit. The families will make the altar, and cover it with food, decorations, and things that the person had once liked. Objects like a drink or food they liked, or a colored cloth representing the color, or even toys or games that the person liked before the death. The altar is covered in Las Flores. This flower is something that everyone has on their altars. Las Velas light and guide the souls to the altar.The people also celebrating Dia de los Muertos dress up like what the person looked like, or what job they had. On Halloween, people dress up as whatever they want to be to get candy, and go Trick-or-Treating. On Halloween in Europe in medieval times, the people would go out in costumes because they were scared that there were spirits roaming around. They didn’t do this “holiday” because it was fun, instead they did it out of fear. Halloween started with the Celtic pagan ritual known as Samhain. During “Halloween” in medieval times, the people believed that barrier between our world, and the spirit world was at its thinnest, and people could communicate with the dead.

The catholic, mexican holiday, Day of the Dead and the very westernized holiday Halloween may seem very alike with their traditions and themes, but in retrospect, they are very different and have very different origins. Halloween and Day of the Dead happen at the same time, end of October and beginning of November. The background of these two holidays are very spiritual and they have an interesting story of how the Halloween and day of the dead was created. In this essay, I will be talking about the how Halloween and Day of the Dead are celebrated , the origins of Day of the Dead and Halloween, and decorations and celebrations of Day of the Dead and Halloween. Both Day of the Dead and Halloween deal with spooky traditions but they are very different than the stereotypical thought that they are just weird, scary holidays but after reading some background to these two holidays, many people realize there is a lot more to Halloween and Day of the Dead.

Celebrated on October 31st, the festival of Halloween (also known as Samhain) includes dressing in costume, trick or treating, and decorating. Tracing back in history Halloween is considered to be one of America’s oldest holidays, and is still celebrated today. Halloween is believed to come from Celtic rituals. Celtics believed the cosmological myth of Saman (Lord of the Dead). Saman would call on the souls of the people that passed away that year to take them to the afterlife or underworld; the Celtic underworld identifies with the Christian Hell. In order for the spirits to believe they were on their own, the living would wear costumes and mask their identities, along with fairies, witches and demons. This functions as a cosmological myth because it provides a creation story and framework in which this universe occupies and includes many other realms of existence. Another tradition that followed was to give food to the Saman, to persuade him to be more tolerant while he judged the dead ancestors of the living, which he would chose to take to the underworld. In this essay I will further investigate what the origins of Halloween consist of and how it offers reasoning for trick-or-treating. Also I will examine how trick-or-treating, which is still continued today, is connected to ancient Celtic festivals.

An analysis of the book “Day of the dead in the USA” by Regina M. Marchi revealed that to Latin Americans, death does not provoke fear but instead brings together family and friends to value life and each other while it lasts. The first chapter of the book gives a definition of what the Day of the Dead details, a historical background and different customs of celebrating this day in Central America and South America. The second chapter of the book moves onto specifically why Mexico is associated with the Day of the Dead and how they celerate this day. Then the third chapter of the book switches over to how the Day of the Dead is celebrated here in the United States. Finally, the fourth chapter goes into

The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead, by Eric Seeman, discusses how people of different religions are able to benefit from encounters with one another. The two groups discussed in the book explicitly are the Wendats and Jesuits, which were French. These two groups were able to impact one another through their outlay and special attention to their opposing deathbed acts, funerals, rituals for mourning, and remembrance. In the book the rituals for tribute or remembrance were referred to as “deathways” (2). Treatment of the bodies of the dead and unsurmountable woe was not anything out of the ordinary for people of religions that varied as Catholicism

1) Claim: Halloween being one of the world’s oldest holidays is still celebrated in many other countries around the globe. In Mexico and other Latin American countries Dia de los Muertos is a huge part of their culture.

Halloween and the Day of the Dead are celebrated differently in the following ways. One way these holidays are different is the date on which they are celebrated. Halloween is celebrated on the 31st of October while the Day of the Dead is celebrated on the 1st and 2nd of November. They are also different because Halloween is celebrated by children dressing up in costumes and going door to door saying “trick or treat” in hopes that they get candy. This is different from the Day of the Dead where the event is celebrated by Mexicans to honor their dead ancestors by going to their graves, offering them food and drinks, and having a party. Another difference in how they are celebrated is that during Halloween, children have the evening on October 31 to “trick or treat” around their neighborhood for candy. This is different from the Day of the Dead, where people spend the days of November 1st and 2nd cleaning and decorating their loved ones’ graves and preparing all kinds of foods and drinks to have a party/celebration in the evening with their loved ones at el panteón, or in other words the cemetery. The similarity between the holidays is that they are both a joyful and social event for those who participate.

Borrowing from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money. Over time this tradition turned in to today modern “trick or treating”. In the late 1800s, America turned Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, and witchcraft. As the centuries changed Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century (Kammen).