Halloween is kind of fucked up.

Check out the full post:

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/10/a-real-life-celebration-of-day-of-the-dead/

Of course I went trick or treating as a kid.

I would dress up and go door to door with a group of friends and ask for candy from mostly unknown neighbors in suburbia.

In high school, I don’t remember celebrating. In college and post-college, I would go to big, wild house parties involving a lot of alcohol and everyone in costume.

In Guatemala, the culture has been sufficiently “Americanized” (USAificated?) for some Halloween traditions to have arrived here, but the bigger deal is on November 1st — All Saints’ Day. On this day, families and friends gather in cemeteries to commune with their late loved ones. It’s similar to (yet different from) DIay of the Dead in Mexico, which is on November 2nd officially.

I so appreciate the Latin American culture’s attitude toward death and see it in start contrast to North America’s Halloween with its emphasis on blood, gore and fear.