I was able to partake in both Day of the Dead and Halloween festivities while in Flagstaff. Coincidentally, these holidays fall next to each other on the calendar and although both involve skeletons, treats, graveyards and death imagery, they significantly differ in their origins, traditions and meaning. Given the large number of Mexican Americans in the area, the Day of the Dead festivities were every bit as visible as those for Halloween.
Enroute from the Red Rock Secret Wilderness, we detoured to Tlaquepauque, an outdoor market in Sedona with art galleries, craft shops, cobblestone paths & painted arches. Similar to retailers’ commericialization of Halloween and Christmas, mall vendors were promoting Day of the Dead to drive customer traffic – the mall was elaborately decorated and most stores hawked Day of the Dead discounts. Nonetheless, the displays and a community area in a back plaza of the mall, helped explain and engage the broader community in this unique holiday of remembrance.
Día de los Muertos, Day of the Dead is a time when Mexican families remember their departed loved ones. Rather than mourning, it is a time for people to joyously celebrate the lives and contributions of lost family members. Garlands of yellow and orange flowers cascaded from trees in the courtyards. These were strings of marigolds, sometimes referred to as the Flor de Muerta, or Flower of the Dead. Not only are marigolds indigenous to Mexico, but I learned there are over 60 varieties grown across the country. Families place them on altars and gravesites in the belief that the flowers’ vibrant colors and scents will attract the deceased and guide them to offerings prepared by the family. To Mexicans, this flower symbolizes both the beauty and fragility of life.
A small altar occupied each plaza. Mexican families set up altars in their homes and decorate them with photos, candles, and various objects reminiscent of their deceased loved ones. Family members come to the altar to spiritually connect with the departed and offer them gifts. The altars are the ofrendas, or repositories for these offerings – the deceased’s favorite foods, alcohol, pictures, items that had meaning for them. Families congregate around these altars to play games together, remininsce and celebrate the life that was. They will often celebrate a meal together just as they would when the deceased was alive.
Tucked into a quiet corner of the market, the Tlaquepauque Chapel was also bedecked for Day of the Dead. One doesn’t typically see an assortment of skulls and skeletons adorning a Christian chapel, but the skull or calavera is probably the most iconic symbol of Día de los Muertos.
The calavera is typically ornately ornamented often featuring flowers, animals, and other decorations. The skulls may be made of sugar or clay and placed on altars, painted on children’s faces or perched atop skeletal bodies. Usually, they are depicted with a big smile as if to laugh at death itself. During the holiday, the smiling skull is seen everywhere, and rahter than being gruesome, embodies the joyous spirit of the holiday.
There were several activities in the plazas to engage shoppers in the spirit of Día de los Muertos and celebrate their departed loved ones. One booth bursting with color featured a wireframe butterfly and invited partons to write a memory of a deceased love one on a butterfly notecard and pin it to the frame. Grabbing a pink butterfly card, my deceased sister’s favorite color, I penned her a note and let my memories soar as I pinned it to the frame.
In an adjacent plaza, a $1 donation to a local charity, got you a paint brush and small pallette of paint to design a commemorative message or picture for a departed loved one on a long memory wall. I let my inner artist surface – and drew books, children, an apple, a globe and airplane as an ofrenda to my sister’s love of learning and life as a teacher and mother.
For me, these few activities were joyful ways to remember my sister, now dead for over ten years, snatched from life in her late 30’s by cancer. It got me thinking about death and how our American culture at best ignores it, or at worst, fears it as something sad and terrible. These Día de los Muertos activities reminded me that death is a natural part of life. Mexican culture, dating as far back as the Aztecs, has understood this. Rather than mourning, Día de los Muertos is a time for celebrating the dead and remembering and appreciating the lives they lived.
The next evening after a rigorous day of writing, it was time for some Halloween fun. In Flagstaff there is no better place to celebrate Halloween than at the historic Weatherford Hotel. After a light meal at the nearby Global Cafe, we headed down the street to the brightly illuminated hotel with the large animated spider perched over the entrance.
We waited in line to pay our admission fee with a variety of zombies, monsters, vampires, witches and ogres replete with crusty black lips, bleeding wounds and grotesque warts. Entering the hotel lobby, a 20 ft high translucent ghost with a menacing blue lit face welcomed us.
An ogre-like waiter served up a skull on a platter as we began our climb to the third floor of terror – no smiling, gaily decorated skulls at the Weatherford!
A skeleton draped in cobwebs hung overhead, moaning as we past beneath. The hotel ambience was Halloween fright at its finest with gore, torture, terror, evil spirits and gruesome death around every corner.
Not surprising, Halloween has a very different origin than Day of the Dead. Believed to have been influenced by the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, this was a time when people lit bonfires and wore costumes to ward off ghosts and evil spirits. Jack-o-lanterns, originally carved in Europe from turnips, but later from pumpkins in the US, were intended to frighten evil spirits. Trying to usurp pagan traditions, eighth century Christian leaders designated the day after Samhain as All Souls’ Day, a time to honor the dead, and encouraged people to dress up as saints and collect treats door to door on All Souls’ Eve. The melding of the two has resulted in the way we celebrate Halloween today – the trick or treating and costumes combined with the fright of the supernatural.
The Weatherford Hotel was the perfect venue for haunted thrills. Now on the National Register of Historic Places, the hotel was built by Texan, John Weatherford in 1897 as a general store with family living quarters upstairs. A visionary who saw the expanding potential for tourism when a rail connection was built between Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon, he began construction on a three story addition to the building two years later. The Weatheford Hotel was opened in 1900 on New Year’s Day.
The Weatherford soon became the most iconic hotel in Flagstaff. Author Zane Grey wrote ‘Call of the Canyon’ in the ballroom upstairs; at various times in its past, the hotel housed a theater, restaurant, billiard hall and even a local radio station. It is located just blocks from historic Route 66. When the commercial district of Flagstaff went into decline in the 70’s, so to,o did the hotel. Its current owner purchased the building in 1975 to save it from the wrecking ball, renovated and restored it to its original granduer and reopened it as a hotel. Its age, history, and floorplan with nooks and crannies ideal for concealing ghosts, zoombies, witches and skeltetons, made for a thrilling Halloween experience. The various drink stations set up throughout the house were an added convenience and I’m sure smart business for the owner!
After touring the hotel and sharing a drink, we’d had enough Halloween haunting, so headed back to Colton House. Tomorrow was the conclusion of our writers’ retreat and another step in our journey as writers.