Please join us as we come together to celebrate the Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead! This event will be a celebration of the Mexican holiday the Day of the Dead. The Day of the Dead is a two-day celebration that takes place on November 1st and 2nd every year. The holiday is both solemn and lighthearted, with family members erecting an altar with candles, photographs, mementos, and the favorite foods and drink of departed loved ones. Even as respects are mournfully paid to the deceased, levity is a hallmark of this festival. Families and friends visit graves and one another, and recall their loved ones with joy and humor. At this time of great pandemic loss, we invite the MIT community to learn about this unique facet of Mexican culture and take comfort in its meaningful conception of death and remembrance.
The event will have two, asynchronous parts:
- A traditional “ofrenda,” or altar, to honor loved ones who have passed will be placed in the Global Languages Commons (room 16-635) during the first week of November (11/01-11/04). Students, faculty, and staff will be welcome to place photos and mementos on the altar.
- On November 2nd, 2022, the award-winning animated film Coco (2017, Pixar, Dir. Lee Unkrich and Adrián Molina) will be screened at 7pm for members of the MIT community in MIT classroom 6-120. Dr. Javier Barroso will introduce the film at 6:45pm. The film will be in Spanish with English subtitles. After the screening, traditional Day of the Dead calaveritas, sugar skulls (non-edible!), will be distributed as mementos, and traditional foodstuffs will be available for film attendees to take away.