Students Again

In this video a lot of knowledge about the Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead and Mexican culture can be learned. The purpose of the Day of the Dead celebration is to link the past with the present. It is an old harvest festival that symbolizes the end of the harvest season; when the year officially dies. This is a time to remember the ancestors. The holiday last for one week and begins inside the home and end inside of the cemetery. Christian beliefs are integrated through the use of song and dance throughout the festival. As for traditional Mexican foods; I  cannot pronounce or spell most of them. However, they do not seem to be food in the way that American thinks of foods. The traditional Mexican foods don’t seem to focus on nourishment, but rather they focus on their medicinal qualities. Most of the traditional foods are regarded as having healing power. Mexicans also have a history of making different kinds of liquors and eating insects (larvae and ant eggs). One of the special, ancient, practices during the celebration is called the Dance of the Flyers. For this dance a pole is erected in the church square and is about sixty feet in height. This ceremony is over one-thousand years old. During this ceremony, “dancers” swing from a rope around the top of this pole. This is in celebration of the gods who are responsible for the year’s agricultural cycle.