Food is central to celebrating Day of the Dead

Make these Aztec-inspired amaranth and honey skulls for Dia de los Muertos

On the Day of the Dead, ghosts enjoy earthly delights amid Mexican cemeteries. Baskets of sweet breads and tamales grace graves, while altars honoring the departed display hot chocolate and chicken legs. Hear from experts why this morbid day emphasizes the significance of offering foods loved by the dead. Intrigued? You can learn to make them yourself with recipes provided.

Day of the Dead is celebrated across the world

While almost all celebrations involve cemeteries and altars, many countries also have their own unique traditions, including Bolivia’s staircase-shaped bread to help lead souls to heaven, and Haiti’s voodoo-influenced rituals.

Pan de muerto is found on most ofrendas

The brioche-like bread is for both the living and the dead. It’s placed on altars for the spirits who return to enjoy, and families bake and eat it to honor the cycle of life and death.

Almost all Mexican citizens celebrate Day of the Dead

The average Mexican family spends more than $60 USD on celebration elements like flowers, candles, food, and decorations. The holiday also draws more than 2 million foreign tourists to join in the festivities.

Marigolds are an iconic symbol of Day of the Dead

The native Mexican flower performs several functions in Day of the Dead celebrations. Its vibrance and unique scent help guide wandering souls home, and its cheerful color reminds celebrants that death can still be joyful.

Chicano artists shaped the celebration of Day of the Dead in the US

Beginning in the 1970s, Mexican-American artists have used Day of the Dead components like ofrendas and festivals to combine cultural identity with social justice movements, highlighting indigenous traditions to address issues like gang violence.

The holiday has evolved alongside its participants' cultural identities

The Day of the Dead blends various traditions, including Aztec myth, Mexican heritage and Chicano identity. That makes for a complex and evolving holiday. This conversation between Cynthia Vidaurri, a Smithsonian folklorist, and Lalo Alcaraz, a cultural consultant for “Coco,” analyzes how the varied influences have created the modern holiday.

Day of the Dead is more than ‘Mexican Halloween'

However, it’s becoming increasingly common to celebrate the two holidays simultaneously. Hollywood films have made Halloween more popular in Mexico and Day of the Dead more popular outside the country. As a result, events like Mexico City’s annual parade now include elements of both holidays.

Ofrendas are memorial altars constructed to honor deceased loved ones

Each element of the altar is meaningful. There is food and drink to nourish the spirits on their journey, candles to light their way, and incense to protect against evil spirits, among other things.

The film ‘Coco’ sparked global interest in the Day of the Dead

The holiday figures prominently in the 2017 Disney film, which inspired an uptick in Day of the Dead merchandise being carried by national chains like Target and Michaels, sold alongside Halloween merchandise.

Day of the Dead differs from All Souls’ Day in several important ways

The holidays share a calendar date and both honor lost loved ones. However, All Souls’ Day is intended to help guide souls in purgatory to heaven, while Day of the Dead celebrates the temporary return of loved ones’ spirits to Earth.

The Aztecs worshipped Mictecacihuatl, goddess of the underworld

Some elements from ancient festivals honoring Mictecacihuatl and other deities, like incense, skeleton imagery and marigolds, have been incorporated into modern Day of the Dead celebrations, possibly indicating that the holiday blends indigenous and Catholic traditions.

Day of the Dead poems skewer everyone, living or dead

The tradition of calaveras literarias, or satirical poems about death, dates back to the 20th century. They take aim at everyone, including deceased loved ones, politicians, family and friends.

Sugar skulls are more than a sweet snack

The colorful candy combines Indigenous traditions with European confectionery techniques. Its symbolization reminds celebrants that death can be “sweet.”

La Catrina is Day of the Dead’s unofficial symbol

The image of the skeleton in a feather hat, satirizing women who chased European fashion trends, first appeared in 1912 on broadsides printed by José Guadalupe Posada, a Mexican artist. Today, she is the holiday’s most recognizable symbol.

What ghosts eat around the world

This Thrillist article compiles a rich assortment of cultural beliefs and practices surrounding food for the dead. From Bengali folklore to Ancient Greek mythology, peruse through the different ways in which cultures around the world use food to maintain connected to the deceased.

Cinco de Mayo is a regional holiday concentrated in Puebla and celebrated with local cuisine

Puebla is considered by many food experts to be an excellent culinary destination. Traditional dishes you may find there on Cinco de Mayo include mole poblano, a complex, dark sauce born in a 17th-century convent; chalupas, fried tortillas topped with salsa and meat; and chiles en nogada, stuffed peppers topped with walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds.

See what people around the world eat for Christmas

Christmas meals vary widely around the world: the British serve roast turkey and Christmas pudding, many Italians celebrate with seafood-only feasts, Filipinos eat whole spit-roasted pigs, and Mexican families enjoy tamales.

King cake is a classic Mardi Gras dessert

One of the signature foods of Mardi Gras is the king cake, a green, gold, and purple-sprinkled desert. Baked inside is a hidden figurine, though some bakers use other objects. Whoever gets the piece with the object is blessed with good luck, though they're also expected to bring a cake to the next gathering.

Eating fish during Lunar New Year is believed to bring prosperity

Many of the traditional Lunar New Year dishes are deeply symbolic—such as fried spring rolls resembling bars of gold. How the dishes are prepared, served, and eaten is crucial for carrying out their powers.

How to make a Hanukkah feast

You might think you know latkes and kugel, but this collection of Hanukkah-appropriate recipes from Food & Wine takes things to a whole new level. Shake things up at your next holiday table with cinnamon-cardamom sufganiyot, rugelach with a tahini glaze, or brisket with caramelized fennel.

Leaving cookies for Santa became popular in America during the Great Depression

During the period of economic hardship, many parents wanted to teach their children the importance of sharing and gratitude. The tradition dates even further back to ancient Norse mythology. The god Odin and his eight-legged horse, Sleipner, were left food in exchange for gifts.

Beard and his eponymous awards help define 'American cuisine'

Beard sought to fuse classic American dishes, like casseroles, with international flavors and locally-sourced ingredients. The James Beard Awards often reflect the eclecticism, honoring American chefs inspired by Filipino, Nigerian, French, and other traditions.

New Mexico is home to a 'breakfast burrito byway'

Santa Fe's Tía Sophia's was the first restaurant to offer breakfast burritos in the 1970s, a heritage New Mexico has fully embraced. Look no further than its "breakfast burrito byway," a state-sanctioned trail that allows visitors to check out some of the best morning bites in the country.

Things to avoid doing in Barcelona

Everyone gets told about the places they should visit, the food they should try, and the activities they should do. But what about the things one shouldn’t do? Here’s that list. The authors are journalists and tour guides in Barcelona, so you can suspect they know what they’re talking about when they say “Don’t treat tapas like fast food.”

The Dracula character, now seen as the vampire archetype, was inspired by a seafood-induced nightmare its creator experienced.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Cultural norms about how to handle the bodies of loved ones in communities in West Africa have hampered Ebola responses.

See a 3D reconstruction of Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital that was home to an estimated population of 200,000 to 400,000.

Fast-casual restaurant Chili's is experiencing a resurgence, with its parent company recently reporting a nearly 32% increase in sales, thanks to passionate Gen Z fans on TikTok.

Up to a million Girl Scouts sell about 200 million cookie boxes every spring, generating $800 million, largely because refusing a child is frowned upon

El Niño, Spanish for 'the boy,' was named after Jesus Christ because the phenomenon resembled the weather changes observed around Christmastime.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Georgia O'Keeffe's flower paintings are often assumed to be sexual, though the artist claimed she was simply interested in highlighting the beauty of flowers that most people neglect

Crows are believed to have intelligence on par with a seven-year-old child and demonstrate complex behaviors, from problem-solving with tools to recognizing human faces.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

After the Boston Tea Party, colonists switched to coffee, which became the main morning drink for revolutionaries.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

Bone marrow (soft tissue found inside certain bones) generates roughly 500 billion new blood cells each day

Memecoins are a type of cryptocurrency—a form of digital currency with a wide variety of uses—created around popular 'memes,' or viral internet jokes.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The identity of the Tank Man in the iconic photo from the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests remains unknown and was possibly killed.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

44% of Americans say they pray at least once a day—discover how your state's religiosity stacks up against the rest of the country.

Lesser-known phobias include turophobia, or the fear of cheese, and nomophobia, the fear of being without your cell phone.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.