
Show HN: Day of the Dead website with 12 Free illustrations - Calebbarclay
https://dayofthedead.holiday/design-kit/
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jordigh
"Día de los muertos" sounds so weird to me, like we're talking about a
particular group of dead people (say, the dead from a war) instead of the dead
in general. I would say "día de muertos" and most Mexicans in Mexico agree.
It's obviously a back-translation from the English which requires the article.

I also wonder when did the face-painting tradition start. The first time I saw
it was in 2005 at a Halloween party. I thought it was awfully clever and
recognised it as inspired by Posada's catrinas.

The popularity of Día de Muertos in Mexico is kind of strange. Most Mexicans
did not observe most of the traditions that have now become popular. It was a
very regional thing from Michoacán. Talking to other Mexicans, it seems that
during the late 20th century, the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP)
started putting Día de Muertos and other regional Mexican traditions into the
curriculum, which made knowledge of the holiday spread. It would be as if
Mardi Gras became a national holiday of the US and became an icon of US
identity worldwide.

And then we have the James Bond Day of the Dead parade from a movie that we
thought was so cool that we decided to do it for real.

It's an odd thing to see traditions getting established during my lifetime.

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lentil_soup
I don't doubt it's known as "Dia de Muertos" over there, but technically "Dia
de los Muertos" is also correct in Spanish. It's the day of the group of
people that are dead.

Just like you would say "Dia de las Madres", "Dia de los Niños", no?

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jordigh
I always heard "día de muertos". The first time I heard "día de los muertos",
I thought it was some kind of protest over some massacre. We have many
prominent groups of dead people in Mexico. :-(

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corpMaverick
Mexican here. Not everybody does the whole enchilada as it is portraited in
the movies.

On this day, my dad used to got to the cemetery to visit his parents. Clean
the tomb and leave some flowers. But now that he is gone and I don't leave
near him any more we are starting a tradition to make an altar with some
photographs just to remember them and make sure that the members of the family
understand that we didn't come from nothing, there is a family history and
people that left a mark on what we are today. I think it is a beautiful
tradition, not as fun as Halloween but it has deeper meaning. At least to us.

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jordigh
How old are you, and what part of Mexico are you from?

I really think it was in the early 1980s when the SEP started to spread the
holiday. It's kind of hard to figure out.

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tremendo
I am 55 and we did celebrate Día de Muertos back in the 60's. Then we would
bring flowers for our deceased, and outside (and inside) the cemetery it would
be a lively scene with basically the whole town there doing the same, vendors
of flor cempasúchil, sugar skulls, little calaveras (skeletons), etc. it's
been an event my whole life, and something my parents celebrated, it's not
new.

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tremendo
I have to mention that it precedes "Día de todos los santos" so it's (or was)
a two-day celebration. First remember the dead, then celebrate they've gone to
heaven.

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eldoza1
Assets load after about 15 secs, but oh man this is really well done! :)

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blahpro
Nice! I think there's an error in the bottom-left of the footer, which says
"Day of the Day", instead of "Day of the Dead"?

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Calebbarclay
Thanks for that, got it updated.

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forgotmypw
It seems futile to bring up JS-off browsing in this thread, but I will anyway.

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asdojasdosadsa
For me, the images on the page won't load

edit: 50% of them load, 50% give 504

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jameskegel
None of the assets will load.

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kodis
I suspect that's just the server being suddenly overloaded. For me they load,
but take a few minutes to due so. As always, try back later.

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jacoblsievers
Probably killed by reddit...

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Isamu
Very nice work!

