By: Lexton Lee

Do you know how Halloween and Day of the Dead differ? Well Halloween does not honor the dead like the Día De los Muertos. On Halloween, we go trick or treating from door to door. Instead of collecting candy, those who celebrate the Day of the Dead go to graveyards and honor thier lost ones. People put marigolds, decorations, and food on gravestones, and cook a bread with a lot of sugar. On the otherhand, Halloween is just all for yourself. What Mexicans do on other things that Mexico does is that they do parades and have festivals. While Halloween gets fame around the world, it’s not that there are no festivals, no parades, so it’s just a happy night.

Halloween started thousands of years ago. Celts believed that Halloween is the day where the living world breaches the death world so that all spirits can wander around. People saved up food and made a feast for the dead. In fact, much like the day of the dead, the Celts would lay out the favorite foods of lost loved ones. Much, much, later the Christens come to each door asking for soul cakes in return for prayers. The origin of jack o lanterns come in here when the celts did it they used turnips and carved faces into then so spirit will be scared away from their houses this all slowly evolved into into modern day halloween

It’s just Mexico and America that celebrate the dead, other countries do it too. In China, there is a celbration called the Qingming festival. They offer many things like incense, food, tea, and wine. So far, this sounds a bit like the day of the dead, but in the Qingming festival, they also clean the tombs and new dirt is added. Another holiday is All Souls Day which is widely celebrated by Christens. Even though they don’t go to cemeteries they pray for all the souls in purgatory and they pray for everyone, not just themselves. They pray for everyone in purgatory. Yet there is one more, mother and Father’s day. It may seem unlikely but if you get a white rose on either one of those days it actually means your father or mother is deceased. Still there are many other countries that celebrate day of the dead and still many other ways day of the dead and halloween differ.