Day of the Dead Elvis and Punk Rocker

More than anything else, I'd love to go to Mexico at the beginning of November, when they celebrate the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos.

It's a festival where those still living celebrate the lives of those now in the afterlife. I couldn't give two hoots about the religious significance of it all, to be honest, I just like the tack that goes with the festival. Children eat brightly-coloured, sugary skulls, and the offerings of tequila for the long departed relatives are drunk after the ghostly relatives have had their invisible fill.

Day of the Dead altars are gaudy little vignettes, featuring mini representations of skeletons of relatives, still doing whatever they did in the earthly realm. So a taxi driver's grave would be decorated with a skeletal cabbie scene, and someone who works in McDonald's tomb would be temporarily topped with a burger flipping bone man.



Silver Crow Creations sell relatively cheap Day of the Dead models, necklaces, and vignettes, and deliver to the UK. I really like the Elvis and the punk rocker ones (above). They're a celebration of death, a light-hearted take on passing, rather than the sombre, heavy, always, always serious tributes of European culture.

I intend to get some to decorate my last-remaining patch of bare mantel with, and make 2007 the Year of the Dead.