Google MX Debuts 'Día De Muertos' Doodle

Google has tipped its cap to Mexico's "Día de Muertos" or Day of the Dead in a doodle for its MX website which takes the holiday as its theme. The doodle, as seen here, depicts a "Catrina" skeleton wearing a broad-rimmed Victorian-style hat, an image drawn from illustrations first done by Jose Guadalupe Pintada sometime between 1910 and 1913, popularized in one of Diego Rivera's most famous murals and now associated both in Mexico and abroad with the Day of the Dead.

The holiday is a distinctly Mexican one and descends largely from pre-colonial religions, although the modern celebration also incorporates Catholic influences. It's really a two-day celebration: on November 1^st, Mexicans celebrate All Saints Day, in which the souls of children are said to return from Mictlán - the afterlife according to Aztec religion - or Purgatory, for the Catholic interpretation, to the places where they inhabited the earth. On November 2^nd, the souls of adults come back. So on both days, the living receive their dead loved ones by building three-leveled altars - the first representing the heavens, the second the earth itself and the third the underworld - which symbolize the levels the dead must pass through to reach the world of the living. On those altars go the things which loved ones liked best, such as their favorite foods, drinks, sweets, toys and cempasúchil flowers - the latter of which are said to help orient the dead on their trip to the world of the living by virtue of their bright color and scent. The "ofrendas" or altars are put up on October 31^st for the dead, and in the following days the food is to be shared by family and friends.

According to Univision, the influence of Halloween - Mexicans' northern neighbor's own All Saints Day-related celebration and one which Mexicans are increasingly celebrating by painting their faces and going trick-or-treating - might be threatening to muscle out the Day of the Dead for national prominence, at least if you ask some Mexican authorities. The National Institute of Anthropology and History will take part in its first contest of "ofrendas" and costumes in Mexico City this year on Halloween. But at this contest, nothing associated with Halloween will be permitted, in an attempt to preserve the national traditions associated with the holiday, such as the telling of the legend of La Llorona, according to Cecilia Genel, the director of the National Museum of Interventions.