Día de los Muertos Is Not Halloween
Where the author bemoans American’s ignorance of the south-of-the-border holiday “Dia de los Muertos,” and how in our ignorance we’re changing the meaning of it into somethign cheap and commercial.
Hey, buddy: it’s what we do.
If you import your alien holidays into the US, we will change them to suit *our* interests. Don’t like it? Stay the hell out. It’s not “cultural appropriation” for Americans to take Dia de los Muertos and turn it into an extension of Halloween; it’s a simple reaction to something funny and furrin being foisted upon us. If you don’t like it, get in line behind St. Patricks Day. Or Cinco de Mayo. Or Halloween itself. It is standard American practice to take someone else’s “sacred day” and turn it into a reason to party. But we don’t reach across the ocean to rifle through other cultures holidays for things to mock; we only do so with holidays that are brought here.
So, yeah… the Day of the Dead *is* Halloween, because we said so. It’s a day to get trashed on tequila, dress up like a blinged-out skeleton, act like a moron, tell Rebo and Zooty jokes, hang up candy skulls and comets and hope for visits from not-unattractive redheads. Don’t like it? Tough. You brought it here and dumped it in our laps… now it’s *ours.*