Honduras News Stories

Honduran Holiday - Day of the Dead

Flowers and wreaths begin arriving today at the cemeteries of friends and family members. Hondurans are flocking to cemeteries to remember those who have passed on, as today, November 2nd, is "El Dia de Muertos" in Honduras.

Flower sellers were set up at the entrance to a cemetery in Tegucigalpa as early as yesterday to begin selling flowers and awaiting customers, as well as workers offering to fix, clean and paint headstones.

On this date, Hondurans honor those in the cemeteries by cleaning their tombs and bringing a flower or any symbol showing that they are not forgotten.

The Day of the Dead is a celebration of pre-Hispanic Mexico that honors the dead on November 2nd, but the ceremony begins on November 1st, coinciding with the Catholic celebration of All Saints Day.

It is a Mexican and Central American holiday, but is also celebrated in many U.S. communities, where there is a Mexican and Central American population.

The rituals that celebrate the life of the ancestors has been honored in various civilizations for at least three thousand years.

In the prehispanic era, it was common practice to keep skulls as trophies and display them during rituals to symbolize death and rebirth.

The festival that became the Day of the Dead was celebrated the ninth month of the Aztec solar calendar, near the beginning of August, and was celebrated for an entire month.