WINNEMUCCA - Lowry High School Spanish students celebrated the return of the souls of the dead to the world of the living during the month of November by creating some of the traditional decorations and foods that go along with the Mexican Day of the Dead holiday.
Teacher Amie Godinez celebrates the holiday with her Spanish one through four classes each year and enjoys sharing the culture with her students.
"It is a nice break from regular vocabulary and verbs to get them involved in the culture," she said in an after-school interview last week.
Godinez's classroom is filled with trinkets and souvenirs from all over the world, and she says that her students greatly enjoy exploring the many different cultures on display.
For the month of November, however, the focus is mostly on the Mexican Day of the Dead traditions.
Students in all four years of Godinez's class participated in the holiday in one way or another this year: year one students created paper tissue skulls and sugar skulls that are traditionally eaten; year two students made maracas; year three students made "papel picado," paper alters (ofrendas), and Oaxacan porcupines; and year four students decorated match boxes and made their own skeleton figurines.
According to Godinez, the Mexican holiday of Day of the Dead (Dia de los Muertos) is celebrated on Nov. 1 and 2.
"It is a time when the souls of the dead are believed to return to be with the living," she said.
Godinez said that in order to give her students some perspective, she compared it to the American Memorial Day holiday. Whereas we lay flowers at the graves of lost loved ones, Mexicans will spend the entire evening of their holiday at grave sites awaiting the return of loved ones who have departed.
"It is neat to cross the different cultures," she said.
Although Godinez celebrates the holiday with her classes annually, she said that she tries to do a different craft each year while still bringing the important aspects back.
In addition to the hands-on crafts that students create during the Day of the Dead lessons, Godinez also shows her classes videos of what actually takes place during the Mexican celebrations: the cleaning of graveyards in preparation for the holiday, decoration of the graves with the traditional marigold flower, preparation of food for offering tables, and sugar skulls with the names of the living placed on the forehead "to remind us of our own mortality."
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