El Día de los Muertos (by La Sirena)

The dead live among us! But that’s no reason to barricade yourself in your home, armed and ready to fire on anyone who might eat your brains. To the contrary, if you believe that the story of your ancestors forms part of your own and that you should keep their memory alive, then their presence should be cause for celebration. This cause gets taken up with joyful enthusiasm every year in one of the most beautiful communal acts of remembrance embracing both life and death—el Día de los Muertos. This traditional festival, observed in Latin America, and especially in Mexico, takes place on November 1 and 2. But the windup involves all manner of events and excitement. These days, the city and our neighborhood offer plenty of ways to witness the celebration, thanks in large part to the surge in Mexican immigration to our shores since the 1990s. But should you decide to join in the celebration yourself, you’ll want to get acquainted with the basics and procure the necessary provisions. 

In Mexico, el Día de los Muertos involves an all night family party at a cemetery. Here, they call that trespassing and would get you arrested. So let’s skip that part and focus on the centerpiece of the celebration, the ofrenda. This altar, which can be placed in your home or in a public space, serves to welcome the spirits. On it, you’ll want to place the following items:

• Pictures of the ancestors that you want to invite and honor;

• Flor de cempasúchil (marigold flower) petals, which will guide the spirits to your altar;

• Copal, an incense that purifies the space and attracts the spirits;

• Tapetes (rugs), which provide pathway for traveling spirits; 

• Calaveras de azúcar (sugar skulls), which represent the deceased;

• Calacas (skeletons) in playful or humorous postures, to symbolize the embrace of death as a celebration of life;

• Pan de muerto, a bone-shape-decorated sweet bread; and then

• Items that symbolize the four elements:
  • Candles (fire) which serve as guiding lights for the spirits;
  • Papel picado (wind) a colorful paper garland that represents the permeability between the land of the living and the dead; 
  • Food and drink (earth)—especially those that the deceased enjoyed in their lifetime—which serves to lure the spirits; and
  • Water (water), because even the dead need hydration for a long journey.

The length of this list might prove disheartening to those who expected their ancestors to be less high-maintenance in death than they were in life. But as it happens, our neighborhood has a store for all your altar needs. This store, our May 2017 Business of the Month, should be called “El Día de los Muertos,” given the number of skulls it sells year-round; but it’s actually called La Sirena, and is located at 27 East 3rd Street, just west of 2nd Avenue. It sells Mexican artisan craftwork and is, for our money, one the more surprising and visually arresting shops around. 

The polychromatic explosion of merchandise you encounter upon entering La Sirena is Dina Leor’s doing. Dina fell in love with Mexican culture as a 13-year-old, during a visit with her mother (so much so that she considered running away and hiding from her mother long enough to be left behind; only the thought of her recently installed braces and concerns about the dental care access made her reconsider). Mexico rewards those with an exploratory disposition and it rewarded Dina plenty. Just about every alley and courtyard led to a new visually rich and colorful discovery. Everywhere she looked seemed pregnant with history and tradition. Her memories of that visit stayed with her and ultimately led her to become a Mexican folk art shopaholic and a shopowner. 

Dina’s shopaholism has given our neighborhood and the city a specialty store that makes available to all budgets artwork and traditional products from different regions of Mexico. Mothers have come in with only $20 in their pocket and still been able to buy something for each of their four children. The store evokes in Mexican visitors memories of their native land and occasionally tears. 

The number of skeletons and skulls on display at La Sirena might lead you to believe that either East Villages shop for them year round or that the store’s Día de los Muertos celebration never ends. There’s some truth to both. But leading up to the actual Día de los Muertos, La Sirena takes it to the next level, not just stocking enough celebratory paraphernalia to welcome back ancestors going back centuries, but also hosting programming that involves traditional food, music, dance, craft-making, and raffles. This year’s activities will take place on Saturday, October 18. But the fact that the dead have all the time in the world to wait around does not mean that you do. So why not swing by today and explore at La Sirena the many ways of making the present vibrate with the afterglow of yesteryear.