Fall Celebrations!
Halloween and The Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos)
By Joan Burns, Event Planner Extraordinaire

Thank goodness, Halloween and the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) happen when summer comes to an end and you think you don’t have a reason to celebrate until the December Holidays.  Actually Halloween comes from the Irish, and Day of the Dead the ancient Mexican cultures, but in today’s modern age, both can be an opportunity to celebrate with family and friends.

So no matter if you are honoring the dead ancestors with colorful flowers and altars or conjuring up spooky spirits for fun and games, here are some great ways to have the best party ever!

• Choose your date wisely so there will be no conflict with neighborhood events or other family parties.

• Your Day of the Dead Celebration should have lots of offendas for the departed.  Offendas are offerings of trinkets and food items for the dead as they journey to another like.  An easy Offenda to have are dishes of hard candies along with small bars of soap nearby so they can clean-up after the journey.   Use the small bars of soap as the party favor for your guests.

• Be colorful. The Day of the Dead is all about the celebration of life.  Have lots of the traditional flower, orange marigolds, around in vases or potted as centerpieces. 

• If you are honoring a departed family member, build a small altar with their mementos or favorite things on it including their photograph. 

• Choose Mexican Cuisine and have upbeat Latin Music in the background.  Perhaps you can hire a local Mariachi Band to play for a time at your party, to help keep the mood joyful and festive.

• If Halloween is your holiday, make sure you go to the local bulk candy store and get gummy worms, spiders, and other spooky candy for your guests to nibble on.

• Turn your venue into a Haunted Mansion with spider webs, scary lighting, papier-mâché headstones and spooky music. Half the fun will be creating the environment for your guests.

• Halloween food can range from the Traditional apple cider, pumpkin bread cream cheese sandwiches and orange cupcakes to really exciting and creative food items like chicken strips pretending to be fingers and dipped in ketchup acting as blood. Or, using olives on any kind of sandwich, to represent spooky eyes.

• And if it’s Halloween there has to be pumpkin carvings and jack o’ lanterns!  Have a pumpkin carving contest and don’t forget to roast the pumpkin seeds for an extra treat.

• Have everyone come in costume. But just in case some of your guests are shy about getting into costume or maybe forget to, have some spare “parts” around for them to wear to get in the mood.  Old hats, masks, eye patches, scarves, phony glasses, gloves, make-up and old jewelry could be in the “dressing room” to help keep everyone in or with the spirit.

• Go back to old fashioned games, like bobbing for apples or tell ghost stories around the fireplace.

Well planned Halloween and the Day of the Dead celebrations will create memories for your family friends long after the autumn is gone and you start thinking of the December Holiday parties to come.

Joan was a co-host and featured guest on Creative Celebrations on August 26, 2009. To meet the rest of the guests and listen to the entire show, please click here. To listen to Joan's interview, please double click on the Play button below.