Día de los Muertos Is Here: November 1 and 2 Are the Days the Altars Were Built For

The parades were the public face of it. Sunday and Monday are the heart of it. Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead — is traditionally observed on November 1 and 2, a tradition that originated in Mexico and is rooted in Mexican-American and Latino cultures: two days set aside to remember family and friends who have died, with altars — ofrendas — built to welcome their memory back for a visit. Dallas–Fort Worth spent the weekend building toward these two days, with observances from the Bath House Cultural Center at White Rock Lake, where the 40th Día de Muertos exhibition is in its final week, to parades in Dallas and Fort Worth and community celebrations in Oak Cliff and Garland.

An ofrenda is personal before it is decorative: photographs of the people being remembered, candles, marigolds — the orange flowers whose color and scent are said to guide spirits — and offerings of food and drink the dead enjoyed in life, pan de muerto among them. Community altars scale that private act up to a room: at the Latino Cultural Center, Dallas residents installed altars in both Live Oak galleries, traditional and modern interpretations side by side, and they remain on view through Friday, November 6, during the center's regular hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday.

That longer run matters, because the observance days themselves fall on a Sunday and a Monday this year — days when many families visit cemeteries and home altars privately. The exhibitions give the wider city a place to take part respectfully through the week. If you go, the etiquette is the same as at any act of remembrance: look, learn, ask before photographing someone's family altar up close, and let the people who built it tell its story.