A few days ago, I received a handwritten letter from a reader responding to a column I wrote about motherhood and the legacies people leave behind without having children. The letter writer was a woman who had buried her husband and, more recently, her son.
What struck me was how plainly she described her grief, without any self-pity. She wrote, in part: “Life is hard. Life is good.”
Those two sentences may sound contradictory, but they are not. Both can be true at once, particularly in grief, when the pain of losing someone is inseparable from the joy of having loved them. That is also, more or less, the idea behind Día de los Muertos.
This Mexican holiday, celebrated on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, has become hard to miss in the United States. There are marigolds and colorful sugar skulls everywhere. Target has offered Day of the Dead merchandise since at least 2018. “Coco,” the 2017 Disney/Pixar animated film that introduced a generation of American kids to the “ofrenda,” or altar of remembrance, helped bring the holiday into the mainstream. Here in Boston, the Pops will hold its third annual Día de Muertos concert next week, followed by the music of “Coco” in concert. Even Mexico City’s huge parade is a recent invention: It began in 2016 after the James Bond movie “Spectre” opened with a fictional Day of the Dead parade. Traditionally, Mexicans observed the holiday at cemeteries, visiting family graves, or by creating altars at home.
I don’t think that the wider embrace inherently cheapens the holiday. There is a difference between reducing a tradition to merchandise and taking part in it with genuine curiosity and respect for the people who keep it alive. In other words, you don’t have to be Mexican to build an ofrenda or to find meaning in one. Traditions survive partly by traveling to new places, expanding their reach and scope, and this one has picked up new layers through the years.
Why has Day of the Dead become so popular in the US? Maybe it’s because grief here can feel like something we’re expected to handle privately and get over quickly. Día de los Muertos sets aside days — there’s even a day to honor deceased pets — when the dead are named out loud, their favorite foods are put out in the ofrenda, and nobody has to explain why they still miss someone.
But embracing a tradition should also mean caring about whether the people who brought it here can celebrate it freely. This year, some of them cannot. In San Antonio, the group behind a Día de los Muertos festival held at Woodlawn Lake for 20 years canceled it, citing “ICE terrorism.” The only other time it was canceled was during the pandemic. (Other Día de los Muertos festivities in San Antonio are, for now, proceeding as planned.) In Fresno, Calif., the Chaffee Zoo canceled its celebration after consulting with community partners. It will still put up two ofrendas where visitors can leave photos of their dead, if they feel safe enough to come. In Santa Barbara, Calif., a museum is bringing back a procession it canceled last year because of immigration enforcement activity. A museum official made clear that the decision did not mean the threat had passed, but reflected the fact that “our community’s need for healing and visibility is profound.”
In 2020, I wrote about my father’s death and observing Día de los Muertos during the pandemic. Back then, a virus kept us apart from one another. Now, for some families, fear of being arrested by ICE is doing it. A holiday that offers a way to share grief and healing is becoming another occasion to stay home.
So, yes, go to the Boston Pops concerts. Build an ofrenda, even if you didn’t grow up with the tradition — and send me pictures of them to share in next week’s newsletter. (Here are some guides and inspiration to do so.) The holiday has room for that and this country probably needs it more than it realizes. The point of an altar — a place for the people who are gone — is that nobody is left out. Making space for the dead can also teach us something about making space for one another.
This year, it’s worth thinking about the people who are still here and staying home out of fear, mourning behind closed doors on a holiday meant to bring grief out in the open and honor our deceased loved ones. As the reader put it in her letter — yes, life is hard and good. After that, she wrote: “Love fills in between everything else.”
This is an excerpt from ¡Mira!, a Globe Opinion newsletter from columnist Marcela García. Sign up to get ¡Mira! in your inbox each week.
Marcela García is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at marcela.garcia@globe.com. Follow her on X @marcela_elisa and on Instagram @marcela_elisa.