The Day of the Dead is a national holiday that is celebrated in Mexico, and it’s a day for people to honor the dead for their loved ones. Halloween is a day to dress up in scary costumes and trick-or-treat.

The Day of the Dead is celebrated Oct. 31-Nov. 2, but Nov. 2 is the actual date. It is a very sentimental day and night for people to remember their loved ones by bringing food, dishes, flowers, artifacts, jewelry, pictures, candles and ceramic skulls to their altars.

Often times, people confuse this day and Halloween as the same thing. But what they need to understand is that the Day of the Dead and Halloween are two different holidays that mean different things. The Day of the Dead should be respected as a sacred, cultural holiday rather than just the “Mexican Halloween.”

Halloween and the Day of The Dead are very different holidays for America and Mexico, but what’s more fascinating about the Day of The Dead is that it involves paying the respect to loved ones. People think that both holidays are similar in a way because everyone dresses up and go to parties, but both holidays are very different.

The tradition for Day of the Dead is that Oct. 31 is All Hallows Eve, when children make a child’s altar to invite angelitos (spirits of dead children) to come back for a visit. Nov. 1 is All Saints Day when the adult spirits will arrive. Then, Nov. 2 is All Souls Day, which is the most important day because families go to the cemeteries and decorate the graves and tombs of their relatives.

The tradition for Halloween is that Oct. 31 is All Hallows Eve or All Saints Day and is a day for candy and decorating with spooky and scary things. It is filled with monsters, ghosts, ghouls, pumpkin carving, trick-or-treating, darkness, gloominess, haunted houses, and more commercialized especially in today’s society.

It is important to separate these holidays because they have different concepts of traditional celebration, so the meaning of keeping the tradition going is to being more aware and appreciating the holidays. It’s the tradition that keeps this holiday more well known for people to recognize and understand that there is history involved in the Day of the Dead, and why people honor it for what it represents and means to them.

Halloween means candy and costumes, but Day of The Dead means the celebration of life, so there’s more meaning to honoring the dead than just being something scary for one night.

The Day of The Dead is a sacred tradition that not many people are aware of, and it means a lot to those who lost their loved ones.

It’s important to the people that celebrate this holiday, for it’s an opportunity to not only dress properly in bright colors and paint skull faces, but to honor relatives, families, friends, etc. that mean a lot to the people that lost them.

For people who celebrate this holiday and see it as something sacred and special, for it to be reduced to a spooky celebration, it can be disrespectful and belittling to their culture.

For Halloween, people and children dress up in scary, funny, or outrageous costumes to go to neighbor’s home and ask for candy, and that’s it, so what’s the purpose? People are mislead to think that’s what Halloween means in America.

The rituals that are used to celebrate the day that are varied and colorful, yet all carry the same message, for which is celebrating the day of the dead is a true celebration of life.