Dia de los Muertos

[Heinrich]

What is this actually? A perversion of All Souls? It is part of just about every Spanish curriculum in these disunited States of America. It appears ghoulish and a "celebration" of death and idolatry. Anyone have a cultural understanding of this seemingly indispensable and ubiquitous Mexican tradition?

[Daniel]

I think it's nothing more than the culturally-Mexican version of All Saints' Day / All Souls' Day. We learned about it when I took Spanish class back in high school (in public school, before I was Catholic), and I didn't really understand it at the time. But now that I know what All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are about, the Dia de los Muertos seems to make more sense. (Celebrating the saints in heaven, and praying for the dead who may be in purgatory.)

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it looks like it might be syncretistic (Catholic + Aztec). But I really don't know much about it. No idea if it involves religious syncretism / idolatry, or if the syncretism is merely cultural.
I also see some stuff on the Wikipedia page, saying the Mexican government is or was trying to secularize it and remove the Catholic pretext. Not sure what's up with that.

But the Dia de los Muertos festivities don't really look ghoulish or like a death celebration to me though.