Dia de Los Muertos | How a made up holiday trick or treated itself into our hearts

As Mexican American it has always bothered me how I have no childhood recollection of Dia de Los Muertos. I grew up participating in all of the usual cultural beats that comprise the Mexican American experience: posadas, tamales, girls turning 15, massive drunken backyard bbqs for a one year old, harassment from cholos, people who like the raiders or the Dallas Cowboys…..like way way too much. But Dia de Los Muertos? Never heard of her.
Seriously, not until I was in my 20s had I ever even heard of such an event, and it wasn’t until I was married with kids that the holiday really started to get noticed. But where in the heck did it come from? And how come I’ve never heard of it even though it’s supposedly a….3000 year old Aztec tradition?! How?
Let’s explore this mystery together, because everything isn’t as it seems or is sold to the public.
Thanks for watching!
-CCP Management
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Sources for your consideration:
Indigenous Festivity dedicated to the dead by UNESCO @ UNESCO.org (2008)
History of Dia de Los Muertos by Chief’s Message @ Los AngelesPD online (October, 2003)
Is Día de los muertos the same as All Souls Day? by Joel Schorn @ US Catholic (Nov 4, 2011)
What is the tradition of All Saint’s Day in Spain? by People Global Relocation @ PGR (Oct, 29, 2021)
The shapeshifting Nature of Días de Los Muertos and its role in Chicanx [sic] culture by Lara Medina @ PBS SoCal (May 29, 2019)
Traditions and Change: the transformation of Días de los muertos in the United States by Rebekah Mejorado @ Smithsonian American Art Museum blog (Oct 27, 2022)
The day of the dead wouldn’t be complete without Jose Guadalupe Posada by Ana Pacheco @ History of Santa Fe New Mexico (2020)
Dia de los muertos @ Galería de la raza (Nov 2, 1972)
Skulls, ofrendas, and marigolds: heres how day of the dead is celebrated in Mexico by Tiffany Acosta @ Azcentral (Sept 6, 2023)
Is day of the dead more indigenous or catholic? Friars Durán and Sahagún vs. wikepedia by Ruben C. Cordova @ Glasstire (Oct 31, 2019)
Day of the Dead in the USA: the migration and transformation of a cultural phenomenon by Regina M Marchi (June 6, 2009)

[@JCM217]

Dude, your videos are such a treat. LMAO love it :)

[@creativecatproductions]

Thank you very much dude! 😎

[@bryantenorio368]

Dang..indidnt knowbhow new this stuff was. I learnes a lot waching this video. I can see this video beeing posted in the future aroukd october, and maube going viral one day

[@creativecatproductions]

One can dream! Thank you very much for watching dude 😎

[@Parmandur]

Most Most those All Saints/All Souls day practices are also done in Italy.

[@creativecatproductions]

This is true! I also found similar practices in Ireland, Spain, and Poland. Indeed, one of the interesting things I found while researching this video is that Poland, to this day, continues to robustly celebrate All Saints and All Souls’ Day. All of the best and most beautiful cemetery photos online depicting these holidays were from Poland. Thanks for watching 😎

[@Mittens_Explains_It_All]

Nice video dude

[@creativecatproductions]

Thanks dude!

[@crystalmadison8449]

Me gusta your videos

[@creativecatproductions]

¡Muchos gracias dude!

[@randallscott4581]

I don't think Kwanzaa is a traditional holiday in Africa either.

[@creativecatproductions]

It certainly isn’t 😝 Nor is it very fun. All these political holidays made up by activists are boring and redundant. They just desacrilize or ape long standing religious traditions. But dia de los muertos has really come into its own as something appealing….i think mostly thanks to lots of cultural interaction and interpretation

[@randallscott4581]

Hopefully Paramount Global won't come knocking on your door crying "Copyright Infringement!" for having Dora in your video. Also, even if it's made-up, Day of the Dead is an important aspect of a very underrated computer Game: Grim Fandango.

[@creativecatproductions]

Grim fandango is awesome! Even if its made up, its one of the coolest recent holidays by far. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@FeralInferno]

Hey man! I am working on a collab video with a few different content creators about the good ol azul Mega Hombre and would love to have you as a guest on it. Let me know if you're interested and we can talk more about it 😺🔥

[@creativecatproductions]

Is it about Mega Man? I am honored 😎 I have 5 children though and find myself very hard to pin down 😝

[@FeralInferno]

@@creativecatproductions yup, it's about Mega Man 😁 It's not airing until June, if that helps give you more time. Are you on X or Discord to chat more about it?

[@creativecatproductions]

@FeralInferno im on X, but not discord. Let me know what you all have in mind. But June is probably a bad time for us because my wife is having a baby and we’re going to be taking time to get things in order and help them recover.

[@Pon3TorLord]

Have your channel become monetizable yet? You do have the subs, but I'm not sure about views, audience retencion and total hours. Sorry for this comment not being relatable, I'm just curious. I haven't heard about Dia De Los Muertos before, thought I have heard of Coco.

[@creativecatproductions]

We are indeed monetized! While this video is not very successful some of our bigger gaming documentaries continue to pull in lots of views, comments, and so forth. The most successful videos have been our two Turbografx 16 documentaries and they cover the required “audience retention” and “hours” every month just by themselves. Currently we’re working on a massive Yuji Naka retrospective which will probably do well. This is the kind of content people want from us. Anyway, thank you very much for watching. I hope you learned something interesting about Mexico’s fakest holiday 😎

[@Pon3TorLord]

​@@creativecatproductionsThat's at least in my interests. Retro games from the 90's and it's history is my favorite timeframe, it was the wild west compared to today.

[@creativecatproductions]

@@Pon3TorLord it really was a great time period. Every new development was a veritable revolution. I think I want to reflect on yuji nakas career and exonerate him a bit. In recent years hes become a bit of a punching bag and he no longer gets as much credit for his positive contributions to Sega. Indeed, a lot of urban legends have emerged about how awful he is. I set out to debunk the myths, talk about his successes, make fun of balan wonderworld, and reflect on where hes come to and perhaps where he may be going. Its a labor of love 😛

[@Pon3TorLord]

​@@creativecatproductionsI know about a collaborative marked manipulation claim, but that's about it.

[@blarghblargh]

if you think about it, all holidays are made up. except I guess solstice and equinox

[@creativecatproductions]

It’s definitely true that in a manner of speaking all holidays are “made up” insofar as people brought them into existence over some period of time. I don’t, however, think natural phenomena count as holidays in and of themselves because, even if periodic, such events would have to be recognized and counted by someone as a holiday…..the holiday around solstice and equinox would have to be made up alongside these events. When I criticize Día de Los muertos here as “made up” Im really trying to differentiate the holiday from traditional holidays which are organically received from parent to child across a chain of many generations. Indeed, my main gripe is that this is exactly the kind of holiday people claim Dia de Los Muertos is supposed to be, indeed, it’s so much the case that they will say it’s 5000 years old….which would make it more than twice as old as the Christian Spanish tradition its adherents are so keen on replacing. But this claim is without any evidence. Now I am not saying holidays don’t change over time, or that they don’t come in and out of existence, but I guess the key thing I want to get at here is that Dia de Los Muertos isn’t something that was really practiced within families from generation to generation, parent to child. Abuelo and Abuela went to Church, for Mass, on All Saints Day…..and the point of Dia De Los Muertos, on the part of the Mexican state, and Mexican cultural revolutionaries, seems to be to try and get us not to notice that. That’s all. Thanks for watching dude! 😎

[@jmrggrmj9330]

Dude you are butchering everything. As someone that grew up with this tradition I’m just as baffled as you in how comercial it has become and how many things have been misinterpreted, taken out or just not making any sense, it used to be a thing of the south so I get that you being from the north did not celebrated in fact it is weird for me that suddenly people for example in Monterey is celebrating it. In short I do not blame you. You did a nice research but came way way off, Dia de los muertos is indeed that old and yes it was merged with Todos Santos just like many other catholic or Christian celebration with the local traditions all over the world (Christmas tree, the very day of Christmas was moved, saint Patrick’s day etc) the thing is día de los muertos is not just Aztec but it was celebrated in other cultures of Mesoamérica with various differences, please note how I stated Mesoamérica that do not include northern Mexico which is why is very odd to you. About Posadas whom I have a copy of almost all his work did not only made Calacas, he was a cartoonist and artist back in the late 1800s (predating the dates you say about día de los muertos) he used the calacas as a way to point at politicians, something this new fashion of día de los muertos forgets is the tradition of calaveras which are rimes talking about the dead or even the devil making fun of them or they taking some one to the grave usually pointing at some characteristics this were used as coplas but especially un día de los muertos used to be more about death and the underworld, so the art of Guadalupe posadas that you are talking about actually is because of día de los muertos since it has always been tradition to make calaveras and newspapers printed theirs and cartoonist used them to be more nasty. The Catrina so famously used is in fact a cartoon by Posadas making fun at the rich people pointing that everyone dies inevitably no matter how poor or rich and also criticising the decadence of the socialite live in Mexico City soon after the Revolution started. As someone that grew up with this traditio and actually knows it and know scholars that have el studied it I can point out many many inaccuracies about how some use it, never the less I have leen to accept it traditions change and if it is growing and people are appreciating it that’s ok I invite you when you have the chance to visit the south specially Michoacán, Oaxaca, Veracruz and Yucatan and you will see the real thing and the slight and not so slight differences. For example where I live in veracruz, a large state and in fact there are differences even within the different regions, heck in fact it can change from town to town in Oaxaca, but I’m digressing , we do put papel picado and food it’s always what the defunct used to like but also pan de muerto and some Candy specially made for this occasion btw pan de muerto can differ widely but everyone knows tho one in the tv, the pictures are not required but a nice touch also something I don’t see in many modern altars is a representation of the Xolosquincle (the Mexican black dog) that help the dead pass the river of the afterlife without it they might get lost, the altar does not Hebe to be huge it can be a small thing in a corner it’s just how you feel. Any way Mexico is big and with many cultures and traditions that not all Mexicans celebrate but are recognised, Mexico is not a monolithic society, día de los muertos just got popular and got widespread that doesn’t mean it didn’t exist just because you didn’t knew about it.

[@creativecatproductions]

I think most everything you say here is compatible with my thesis and perhaps you didn’t watch the entire video? Surely All Souls Day has merged with all kinds of local customs or personal preferences, indigenous or otherwise, but the idea that Dia de los Muertos is actually, at its core, Aztec is wholly unfounded. How did Aztec customs get to Spain, Italy, and France? How did pan de muerte (soul cakes) get to Ireland? Indeed, more inappropriately, how did refined sugar and European bread get to the Aztecs 3000 years ago….when mesoamerica had no use for either? All souls day is the root of dia de los muertos. And yes, it looks a little different everywhere, just like any holiday but the central idea is the same….but dia de los muertos as it exists today? Thats an import to Mexico from Los Angeles. Not the Aztecs or any other indigenous “death cult”. Thank you very much watching and for the thoughtful comment. I’ll consider everything you said, but also consider the possibility that dia de los muertos is not actually a 3000 year old Aztec holiday, but actually Mexican All Souls Day reappropriated in recent times. Thats my actual point😎

[@creativecatproductions]

About calacas and posada, i never said he exclusively made calacas and indeed I explored the possibility that skeletal imagery from dia de los muertos affected his artwork as opposed to the otherway around…..but no documentary evidence exists whatsoever to support that idea. Every single image or description of dia de los muertos that i found, from before the 1970s and 80s, was virtually identical to all saints day in every single way: visit a cemetery, light some csndles, say some prayers, leave an offeting….the same thing catholics in every other catholic country have done for centuries….from Ireland, to Poland, and to Mexico. Skeletal imagery or people dressed as skeletons first emerged in Los Angeles california and those people were inspired by the art of Posada. This was according to the smithsonian, and the Chicano community in LA themselves, but obviously it’s possible thats its wrong. But if you can find just one piece of documentation that proves that dia de los muertos in mexico (before 1970) looked anything like dia de los muertos today and not like all souls day then you would be doing me and everyone else a huge favor because try as I may I just can’t find it. Thank you again! Im 100% open to being wrong. This video is simply based on personal observations and research and of coursr that can be wrong. But, inversely, so can the mythology surrounding dia de los muertos. Scrutiny and skepticism goes in every direction I think.

[@creativecatproductions]

I added some sources to my video description so you can see some of the places I read in order to make this video. Regarding your point about how Dia de Los Muertos was formerly more a regional Mexican phenomenon, I can corroborate that with personal experience: the first time I encountered Dia de Los Muertos was in college….sometime between the year 2000 and 2003. At the time the event was not widely known or talked about in Texas or northern Mexico, but I found an exhibit once in a gallery describing the holiday as something “regional” to southern Mexico. This was, of course, long before Coco and a few years before instagram or social media went mainstream. We did have All Souls Day though. I would characterize El Paso/Juarez (the area I am originally from) as being “very religious” traditionally. At least in generations past. Millennials and younger groups of people are far less religious but the area was fairly religious for quite a long. It’s possible the chief difference in the region was the name, or the refusal to indigenize the name of All Souls’ Day as a holiday?

[@jmrggrmj9330]

@@creativecatproductions in the south Todos Santos and Dia de muertos was used indistinctly to refer to it, although very religious people only refer to it as Todos Santos and usually their altars were more like in coco, the ones that were more traditional than religious usually would put skulls and as I said the dog figure, and in rural town (ranchos) they would put Tamales, Mole just for the altar and the next day they would re-cook it and eat in a party very nice btw. nowadays people use more día de muertos than the latter I guess because it has become more popular. in some places more days are celebrated where I lived as a kid some days are dedicated to specific ways the person died for example drowning or a day specially for the children (that would be the first of November) being the 2 of November the main one. Btw check the cleansing of bones in Campeche tradition. I was remembering the 70s movement and you should look at when the government (Mostly the president Echeverría) wanted to replace the tree wise men with Quetzalcoatl to bring presents to kids in Christmas, there is a video somewhere in black and white with the big event they did to introduce the concept of course it didn’t work and even make some religious people to say that it wasn’t either Quetzalcoatl, the three wise men (Reyes magos) or Santa but baby Jesus that brings the toys so today some get presents from Santa (mostly north and more modern families) Los Reyes (more traditional families), some from both (my kids for example😅) and a few that get them from Baby Jesus (very few but deeply religious families). Sorry for the long posts but it is an interesting topic and there is a lot of info.

[@jmrggrmj9330]

@@creativecatproductions like I said Posadas would make his Catrina and cattiness in the season of fia de los muertos in the tradition of Calaveras as I said is a way to make fun of the Death and people in a lightly maner. The Carrie as parade that get the inspiration from posadas art is a modern addition that never existed before as you say, the only place I know where a párese was done is in central Mexico and is a párese of the Monarch Butterfly that are in that region conectes to the Dia de Muertos and comes from prehispanic times. The Catrina when I was in college people used to dress like that for Art exhibits and cultural events later hipster take it an started to do catrinas contests and later full parades. Yes that part is the one that for me makes no sense within Dia de los muertos celebrations. And yes you will not find that before the 90s or even 80s or 70s because it is a modern addition. Día de muertos was never a party just a day to celebrate the dead ones and usually depending on the region was just the altar. In some rural communities even the priest were scolding people for it and encouraging people to do it in a more Christian manner. As I said día de los muertos and Todos Santos merged, is not that the days coincide but more than they were moved to acomódate already existing practices and make way to the new ones brought by Europeans so the transition was easier, thus creating a cultural an religious syncretism, just look at la virgen de Guadalupe and al the simbolismo so rounding her, it’s all prehispanic it appeared in el Tepeyac of all places, where people used to honor Tonanzin, this was a common practice introduced by Franciscan and Dominican monks to help with the conversions. Anyway all the painting faces an parades an all that stuff started more as a social - cultural event for entertainment in the Dia de los muertos season rather than part of the tradition that is just the altar and in many places the visiting of the graveyards.