Celebrating Halloween, the Dead and the Places They Reside
Get on those costumes and get out the candy, it's time to go trick or treating.
Halloween, or All Hallows Eve is upon us with goblins, ghosts, witches and all manner of creepy, scary characters. There will be houses decorated with the same panache we see at Christmas. People will spend hours designing and carving pumpkins creating amazing jack-o-lanterns. A few hardy souls will even take a trip to the local cemetery and make every effort to scare up as many graveyard ghosts as possible.
cowgirl via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
Halloween is just the first day of a three day event celebrated by our southern neighbors
in Mexico. Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) coincides with the Roman Catholic religious holiday, All Saints Day on November 1st and All Souls Day on the 2nd. The weekend is set aside for families and friends to get together and remember their dearly departed. Many people believe this is when the souls of the dead come to Earth to visit the living. The displays on some of the grave sites are so elaborate, that the thought and effort put into the decor is a herculean task. Altars configured out of all manner of objects have been recognized as museum quality folk art.
Whether your going out tonight looking for a good scare, or lugging bundles of flowers
on Saturday, this is a big weekend for cemeteries. As a final resting place, cemeteries are a lot like cities. Some are big, some are small, they usually have roads or lanes, and the graves are lined up in neat rows like one huge housing development. There are the lower income cemeteries as well as the resting places for the rich; you can usually tell what neighborhood your in by the size and design of the monuments. Some cemeteries are much more interesting to stroll through - others are boring, grassy expanses with nary a marker in sight. New Orleans has some of the best cemeteries in the country, such as the Lafayette, which is featured in our picture panel. Like many dense urban communities, the residents of these mausoleums are packed in close together. Just like a neighborhood in your area, some houses need a little attention while others on the block are show-stoppers. Then there are even condo units; burial chambers stacked one on top of another which saves space and splits the cost between all the occupants.
via flickr; Oscar Wilde grave, clemente via flickr /Artwork: designslinger]
We will move across the ocean to Paris and take a look at Cimetiere du Pere-Lachaise,
which is visited by more tourists than any cemetery in the world. The place is populated with historical luminaries from France, the U.S., Russia, Europe, you name it. Some of these names may mean nothing to you, but a few may be recognizable: Yves Montand, Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Frederic Chopin, Gertrude Stein and her partner Alice B. Toklas, Richard Wright, Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Balzac, Moliere, Maria Callas, Marcel Marceau and the two headliners: Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde. Pere-Lachaise shares some similarities with our New Orleans resting place, but when you compare the pictures, it's pretty apparent that we've moved up the socio-economic ladder. The cemetery contains some of the best over-the-top funerary design I've ever encountered. I'm not sure who gets more visitors, Morrison or Wilde, but the Wilde monument designed by Jacob Epstein, is a beautiful work of art. All the smudges and marks you see on the stone are remnants of the thousands of lipsticked lips that have left Mr. Wilde a kiss.
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