School Children With Ofrenda

Ofrendas are set up to remember and honor the memory of ancestors. Often ofrendas include Catholic religious symbols with Mesoamerican influences. Influences like the ritual of including a person’s tools alongside the body before cremation followed by 80 days of placing food and water at the family or temple altar. The Nahua people welcomed their deceased by shouting their names - leading them to elaborate offerings of food, water, tobacco, new clothes and tools. Those who do not build altars, do, for the most part, follow the Spanish/European customs of taking flowers and cleaning graves, like Memorial Day in the United States.