Everywhere you turn at the moment you will greeted by something connected to Halloween, however Halloween is not the only ‘spooky’ holiday that is celebrated at this time of the year. In Mexico on the 1st and 2nd November they celebrate ‘Day of the Dead’ which is a traditional holiday where people gather to pray and remember family and friends who have died, some of the people that celebrate this holiday believe that the gates to the spirit world open and for 48hours the deceased can come and enjoy festivities with their loved ones!

Families decorate their homes with candles and flowers and gather to eat a feast. Something that you may associate with this holiday is a ‘Sugar Skull’ Sugar skulls traditionally represent a departed soul and have their name engraved on the forehead and are decorated in bright colours to be placed on their grave. The Mexicans make sugar skull candies and chocolates to sell during the day of the dead celebrations too.

For the past week workers and young people have been learning all about this tradition and have been making lots of different things to display in the teen bar ahead of our Halloween Party on the 2nd November. We have made our own sugar skulls- we found a recipe online for these and they actually turned out pretty well. The young people have made traditional day of the dead masks, have looked into research and completed word searches and puzzles as well as creating our own tomb stone which will take centre stage during our party! Take a look at the photos to see what we have been up to: