The Day of the Dead

Hot on the heels of Halloween comes The Day of the Dead, Mexico’s most vibrant spiritual spectacle. Family and friends gather in the streets to remember their departed loved ones in a carnival-like display meant to mock death, while also commemorating its pain and melancholy. Faces everywhere are painted in the style of La Calavera Catrina (the Dapper Skeleton), a ritual born out of a famous 1910 zinc etching by Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada. Why are we telling you all this? Because this year, The Day of the Dead is coming to Athens. The city’s Mexican community and the Mexican Embassy is hosting a free evening of performance and traditional Mexican sculpture at The Archaeological Society of Athens, with a Day of the Dead-inspired parade through the pedestrian zone of Thissio. Kids and adults can have their faces painted as Catrinas, enjoy a Mexican folk concert by singer Martha Moroleón, and snap themselves with a series of life size sculptures created by Greek-Mexican plastic artist Arlina Kotsifaki Palamidi, to be exhibited in the Archaeological Society building. There’ll be Mexican food and drinks up for grabs too.