I figured it was the easiest one to carry and also the one that lasts the most in the elements. Sugar skulls are an incredibly important part of an altar, but I found it strange that, of all the decorations we put up in an ofrenda, the sugar skullswere the one that people took to the cemetery, too. It was here that I started noticing the small sugar skulls some people would lay on the tombstones of their loved ones.

When I grew older, we started going to the cemetery each November 2nd-the day we celebrate Día de Muertos in my hometown-or the following Saturday to spend some quality family time gathered around the tombstones of relatives who had passed on. Each classroom would make an altar or “ ofrenda” for a Mexican celebrity, with everyone contributing the different elements it contains, and then the altars would be displayed outside each classroom to commemorate all the people who had contributed to our culture in one way or another.Īs the years went by, some parts of the celebration remained (such as the making of an altar for a Mexican or Latin American celebrity), while some others were taken away (it eventually stopped being a day off school) and some others were added. At first, it was only a day off elementary school, and either the previous day or the next one, there would be a school festival where we would read our “literary calaveras”: satirical poems in which the author writes about Death coming to the world of the living to take someone to the land of the dead. The Meaning and Importance of Sugar Skulls Mexican Rootsĭía de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a holiday I’ve witnessed and lived my entire life.

Sugar skulls slot