You should say:
What it is?
Who takes part in it?
What activities there are?
And explain how you feel about it?
Describe a tradition in your country
Okay, so at the end of October and beginning of November each year, we celebrate the Day of the Dead, or Dia de Muertos, as we call it.
It’s a national holiday, and it is based around the family coming together to remember and pray for all those relatives and friends who have died in the past – the prayers are supposed to help their spirits on the journey to the afterlife.
Many families gather together at family alters, or ‘ofrendas’, where they spend time with their loved ones honoring those who have died.
They bring items like flowers, sugar skulls and often women in the family will prepare the favorite dish or food that a particular person loved to eat and take it with them when they visit the grave site.
Some visitors to the family graves also leave items which belonged to the person who died; mementos of them.
The origins of this tradition go way back, hundreds of years to the time of the Aztecs and an annual festival they used to hold worshipping a goddess; I can’t remember her name now though.
And it became a national holiday back in the early 1960s when the government decided to consolidate the tradition of the indigenous natives to unify the whole country because apparently it wasn’t a special event in the north of the country originally, or something like that.
But it gradually spread throughout the whole country over a long period of time.
The three-day event has separate parts to it. So the first day is when kids dedicate their prayers to children who have died, ‘angelitos’ they call them, and ask the spirits of the children to visit.
The second day is dedicated to the spirits of adults who died, and then the final day is when families visit their family grave or cemetery with their special gifts, food and so on and spend time praying for the souls of their loved ones who have died.
I think it’s an interesting tradition because it involves all family members and all families across the country, so it really is a strong tradition and it brings families together every year.
