Day of the Dead

Yesterday I walked in a billion yellow maple leaves. They shuffled like feet beneath me as I walked, and the ground was a shifting mosaic, a working palette of yellow that made up for the dull grey sky. Threatening, they call it, that cloud-heavy ceiling weighted with water about to fall, once the clouds decide on the form—snow, sleet, hail, or just plain cold rain. We had an afternoon free after the day’s visit to the hospital, and we found the short hills (an oxymoron-that, but the best you can do in Ontario where “the mountain” is a 190 foot cliff made impressive not by height but by mighty waterfalls.) We wandered through the hills, finding leaves. On the drive back we noted the Halloween decorations in people’s yards, giant threatening figures made of black plastic, and giant threatening faces hacked into pumpkins.

In Oaxaca, my teammate Tiff has posted these photos of the Day of the Dead. It is the biggest holiday of the year. It spans 3 days, beginning the evening of October 31, and coincides with the three Catholic feast days All Saints’ Eve, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day, but it’s not Halloween. It’s a festival the Indians of southern Mexico celebrated for hundreds of years before the Catholic Church came to teach of Christ and to build its cathedrals on their holy sites. The Church moved the Day of the Dead from early August to November 1 to keep it within Catholic tradition. It’s hard to tell today who learned from whom in such moves.

If I were a Oaxacan Mixtec today, I wouldn’t be looking at leaves. I’d be cleaning and decorating the graves of loved ones with bright marigold flowers that represent the sun and building an altar in the living room with food my loved ones craved—tamales, atole, and the sweet bread of the dead. There’d be candy skulls with their names engraved across the forehead and candles, and I’d pull more gold flowers apart and lay a trail of petals to the door to light the way for my loved ones when they came at night to eat the essence of the food, and I and all my town would meet at the cemetery and wait for them there, and there would be musicians playing all night, and singing and partying, because the loved ones don’t come like the living dead but like good Mexicans, all glitter and sparkle and wide skirts, with huge smiles, ready for a party. And sure, there are chilling tales of what happens when people neglect the dead and forget to build the altars, but who wouldn’t be angry if you came up from the grave in your dancing clothes and you found your family in bed snoring?

One commemoration for the dead stands out for me. In a Mixtec town called Yuvinani, a man who had come to know Jesus and had pleaded publically with his town to come to Him was martyred. His name was John. A year later, his friends and family gathered early in the morning at his grave. They sang and prayed and reminisced about John’s life and sacrifice. But they were not waiting for him to come back on any Day of the Dead.  They knew well where he was and were glad for him.

 I am sure that on November first every bone in their bodies yearned to build that altar with all those marigolds and candles and food. It was the way they knew to show love. We have no idea what it takes to throw away a tradition that important. Imagine killing Christmas. Yet they did, because they now knew where their dead were going and how they would return, and this good news was the new axis of their lives. And yet, “the kingdom of God is a party,” so here’s the dilemma of missionaries. How do you redeem such rich and colorful traditions as building altars for the wandering dead? How could the truth of the resurrection unleash such creativity, such fellowship, and such joy in a Mixtec town that strolls, not over fallen yellow leaves, but over the strewn yellow petals of the sun?