Extranomical's San Francisco City Insider Tour visits The City your way. For example residents of San Francisco's Mission District have celebrated Day of the Dead or Dia de los Muertos for over 30 years with a nighttime procession, costumes and sharing traditional Mexican foods.
Anyone is invited to come in costume, bring photographs, favorite foods, votive candles or other mementos of the deceased. This year the procession will begin Monday, November 2, 2009 at 7pm at the corner of 24th & Bryant Streets in the Inner Mission and conclude at Garfield Park near 26th and Harrison Streets with a Festival of Altars until 11pm.
Here's how it all began:
Before the arrival of Christopher Columbus in North America, indigenous societies lived throughout Mesoamerica, a region that today includes Central Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua. Among other abilities, Mesoamericans excelled in astronomy, developed writing and practiced elaborate religious rituals and festivals.
One of these honored a pair of deities that shared dominion over Mictlan, a mythological underworld that symbolized the afterlife. Mesoamericans ascribed images of bones and skeletons to fertility, health, abundance and the cyclical relationship between and life and death.
The Goddess Mictecacihuatl or Lady of the Dead was believed to have been sacrificed as an infant and thus became guardian of the bones of innocent children who roamed her Mictlan domain. Mictlantecuhtli, her husband, is associated with human sacrifice. He is often depicted as a bloody skeleton showing empty eye sockets and a toothy grin. With arms raised in an aggressive stance, Mictlantecuhtli appeared always ready to attack the not-so-innocent dead as they entered his Mictlan domain.
One aspect of the Spanish colonization of Mesoamerica was to have Spanish Missionaries spread Christianity and a European style "civilization" among the local populations. Thus native people were forced to become acolytes, their beliefs, customs and festivals integrated with Roman Catholic Holy Days in an effort to achieve total assimilation.
A typical example was to merge the Mictlan myths with the Catholic Holy Days All Saints Day (Dia de los Innocentes) and All Souls Day (Dia de los Muertos) traditionally held on November 1st and 2nd.
These have become major holidays in Mexico, South America and Latino communities in North America like San Francisco's Mission District. This is a time when the living honor the dead by gathering in cemeteries, decorating graves with marigolds, building altars, feasting and walking in processions of joyful remembrance.
Just let us know what your interests are when you book or board the Extranomical San Francisco City Insider Tour or we can arrange a private tour and do our best to accommodate everyone.
