Day of the Dead: How to Enjoy it without Ruining it

(If you're a techie, you may want to read this).

Photo courtesy of S. Renee Jones

I'm going to spell this out in three basic steps, because I know that business people have a deep respect for things that are organized in threes.

1. Listen before you speak! Before you go painting your face, read about this tradition. Be humble enough to realize that you don't know everything and that 'Day of the Dead' has deep roots, which are worth learning about. Research. You may want to observe it this year and just stand back. It's better than painting your face and looking confused, like you don't know what the hell you're doing there. I've had techies tell me, "I went to Day of the Dead last year and all I saw were white people." Yes, the white privileged people have violently gentrified our city and clearly outnumber the Latinos who celebrate this holiday. Don't take it a step further by ruining the tradition.

2. Don't take life-sized pictures of your deceased family members to Garfield Park and set them up like altars. It makes it look like you're worshiping yourselves. Last year, I was surprised to see predominantly white people with enormous framed pictures of their loved ones, sitting around looking sad, like they had more of a reason to be sad than anyone else. Whether you mean to do that or not, that's how it comes across. The gathering at Garfield Park has traditionally been a small, organic operation, with a lot spiritualism and very little to do with materialism.

3. Don't invite all your friends to your cool 'Day of the Dead' party. Stick with what you know and call it a Halloween party. Why‽ Because for every person who celebrates ‘Day of the Dead’ in their own way, believe it or not, the tradition is being replaced with a new superficial vision. Many families in the Mission District have been evicted, and now the new 'techies' are more numerous. That is to say that if you all take your freedoms to celebrate this holiday in your own way, you will effectively be stomping out the existing tradition and replacing it with your meaningless Bohemian Halloween.

Street art - Bayview, San Francisco

By 2025, the Mission district's Latino population is expected to drop from 48 percent to 31 percent. During this time, households with children in the neighborhood are expected to drop from 21 to 11 percent. We are losing this neighborhood at an alarming speed. Some newcomers enjoy going to their favorite 'panadería' in the Mish and ordering in Spanish. They see it as a culturally rich neighborhood and find ways to benefit from that. We are for the blending of cultures, bilingualism, polyglotism. Be one of us rather than appropriating the tradition. You will be unintentionally dancing on our graves.