How to Host a Day of the Dead Remembrance Celebration

For Hazel Tinoco Zavala, art director at Bon Appétit, Mexico never feels closer or farther away than on November 1. Día de Muertos, an autumnal tradition, invites the dead back to the world of the living. It’s a time when cemeteries across the country blossom into life, when cempasúchiles, or marigolds, are placed in bushels atop tombs, and candlelit parties go well into dawn. Ofrendas—elaborate altars to the dead—are heaped high with sweet bread, fruit, flowers, and the favorite dishes of departed loved ones, like mole, enfrijoladas, and tamales. After moving to New York seven years ago, Zavala wondered: Could these rituals be just as potent when reimagined elsewhere?

Zavala grew up in Michoacán, a region where rural communities have passed down the holiday’s customs and recipes for generations. “My family used to live close to the cemetery,” he said. “Every year we would have lunch there with the other families, play music, drink, and hang out for hours.” He remembers driving to Pátzcuaro too, where the ancient city’s plaza teemed with food stalls and sugar skulls, while La Catrina skeletons wove through the bustling crowds. Throughout this time he paid his respects, honoring cultural figures or distant relatives he’d never met. Then, in 2018, Zavala’s father passed away, forever altering his relationship to the home, and traditions, he’d left behind.

It was this sense of loss that inspired a ritual of Zavala’s own: a remembrance dinner. I joined him and nine of his friends for the occasion one balmy evening at a Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, brownstone. Upon entering I was met with the aroma of copal, a tree resin burned as incense. Turning the corner revealed the ofrenda, its tiers resplendent with cempasúchiles, candles, photos, gifts of dried chiles, fresh tamarind pods, epazote, dragon fruit, and nopales.

In Día de Muertos tradition, it is believed that smell—the incense, the food, the flora—guides souls from Mictlán, the world of the afterlife, on their journey home. At Zavala’s dinner, this was also true of the living. “Our senses are so strong,” Zavala said. “I smell the copal, the flowers, and it feels like I’m back.”

Zavala hosted the first of these meals after the pandemic lockdown. “It started out as me wanting to do an altar,” Zavala said. “But then my roommate was like, ‘I would love to make my dad’s favorite pasta dish,’ and then we both did a dish, and we put up our photos and had a nice night.” It was intimate, with only four people, but the event was compelling enough to repeat the next year. As the remembrance dinner grew, so did the altar, which hosted more and more relatives and offerings

On this night, Zavala’s friend Carolina contributed a roll of Colombian pesos because her abuela loved counting money, coin by coin. Zavala furnished the nearby dinner table with savory calabacitas and bean tamales, once favored by his father, Francisco, whose handsome sepia portrait watched over our festivities.

Guests trickled in. Some knew each other, some didn’t. But the sights and sounds and smells worked their magic, and talk came easily around the altar. Music featuring classics from Juan Gabriel, Daniela Romo, and Luis Miguel (por supuesto) filled gaps of chatter. Spanish and English commingled like old friends: Which part of Mexico? Ah, a norteño. I’ve never been. Remember this song? Oh God, my parents played it every single day. Hold on. Quiero cantar esta parte.

When Zavala took his seat at the head of the table, there was no big speech, nor the somberness one might expect at a ceremony centered on the dead. Between the clinking of glasses and the compliments for each other’s cooking, there remained a palpable sense of what remained unspoken: the longing for a country left behind, of loved ones lost, all briefly regained in a night of small gestures.