Every November 1 and 2, Mexico celebrates El Dia de los Muertos, a.k.a. The Day of the Dead. And unlike Halloween, this is not a spooky, scary holiday, filled with goblins and spiders and special Simpsons episodes . Instead, it's a real fiesta, the happy, good-cheer kind, as families reunite with their absent relatives. Now, that's my kind of party.
Celebrations differ from town to town, natch.
In Higaldo, for instance, dead children are celebrated first and dead adults on the second day. But across the board, families bring huge picnics to the cemetery , and everyone stays there all night, eating and drinking. Many Mexicans admit that it can be a bit strange, on first encounter. It's the pre-Columbian ideas, mixed with ideas from Spain. And it becomes a strange mix, in the popular culture.