This past week, the Diversity Club set up an altar in celebration of the holiday Día de Los Muertos, or Day of the Dead. The holiday is a day of celebration of relatives of ours that have passed on. “The holiday focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died,” says Angela Birts, Director of Diversity at Menlo and leader of the Diversity Club. Students in this club normally celebrate this holiday and felt that they wanted to share this aspect of their culture with the rest of the school.
Traditionally, those celebrating the holiday build altars that include sugar skulls, possessions of the deceased, and the favorite foods and beverages of the deceased. Then, the family of the departed visits the grave of the person they are celebrating bringing these things as gifts. At Menlo, the altar that Diversity Club created had pictures of the deceased, colored cut out designs, candles, and flowers, as well as the extremely popular sugar skulls.
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