October marks the beginning of a busy holiday season for many Americans: a burst of excitement around Halloween leads swiftly to the hubbub of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s.
But other holidays from around the world receive their due attention in October as well. The Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos always follows Halloween and the Hindu festival of lights, Diwali, falls alongside both celebrations this year.
Hampton Roads residents took part in each holiday this month.
Virginia Beach Town Center hosted trick or treating Saturday ahead of Halloween — an event that organizers called a time to slow down and enjoy family.
Parklawn-Wood Funeral Home & Memorial Park in Hampton hosted a Día de los Muertos party that offered another moment, outside of funerals, for families to visit and remember loved ones who had died.
Hindu people from across Hampton Roads visited the temple in Newport News, the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, for the all-day Diwali event Sunday.
Día de los Muertos is celebrated by Mexican communities on Nov. 1 and 2. It has also entered the popular imagination as a day to reflect on death — a theme that resonates with the origins of Halloween — and is celebrated beyond the culture that originated it.
Diwali, a festival of light marking the new year in the Hindu calendar, takes place every fall. This year, it’s on Oct. 31. The holiday is one of the biggest of the year: Everyone wears their best and prepares copious amounts of food, first to offer to the gods at the temple and later to offer to each other at a community celebration.
Halloween in Virginia Beach
No kids wore coats over their costumes Saturday at Town Center in Virginia Beach. It was too hot for that.
Bright sun glinted off sequins and sparkles on fairy wings; young faces were flushed under costume make-up and masks.
The Landon family dressed as J. M. Barrie characters — dad Robert as Captain Hook, mom Ashley as Wendy and infant daughter Annalee as Tinker Bell. Their toddler son Adam starred as Peter Pan.
The event is geared toward families, said Jeanne Evans-Cox, executive director of the Central Business District Association and event producer for Town Center.
Families crowded the crosswalks, going between businesses to trick or treat. People converged on the central plaza for a costume contest and to watch a Taylor Swift impersonator perform.
Wilder Ruiz posed for a photo as Aquaman, his sister River as Wonder Woman beside him. The superhero team was rounded out by their parents Tiffany as Catwoman and Diego as Batman. Even the family dog, Luna, wore a Superdog costume.
“Halloween means funness and joy and it also means celebrating with your family,” said Arabella Medina, who rocked a Princess Jasmine costume.
Her mom Francesca Medina, dressed as a witch, echoed her sentiment.
“Fun. Festive. Family,” she said. “Get together with the neighbors and just have fun with the kids.”
Día de los Muertos in Hampton
Parklawn-Wood Funeral Home & Memorial Park hosted another family event — for relatives both living and dead.
The funeral home hosted a Día de los Muertos party for local Latino communities and to introduce others to the culture.
Some say the Day of the Dead is when spirits return to visit their living families. Others simply light candles and remember those who have passed.
The holiday originated in Mexico and is widely believed to be an amalgamation of indigenous traditions that predate Spanish colonization, as well as Catholic observances All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, later brought to Mexico, which also honor the dead.
Norma Canas, a family service counselor at Parklawn-Wood, helped develop the event with the goal of connecting with Spanish-speaking communities in the area.
Canas, who is from Honduras and grew up in Fredericksburg, said her family doesn’t quite celebrate Día de los Muertos, but they do light a candle and make an altar to remember relatives they’d lost.
She had that in common with many of the event’s attendees. They didn’t come to celebrate Día de los Muertos in itself. They were there more because their departed family members were never far from mind.
Jerry Jeffries brought his two grandkids to play bingo and watch the movies funeral staff screened in a chapel. His wife Tonya Rose Jeffries died in May. The pain is still fresh for him and his sons, he said. He is a frequent visitor to the cemetery where his wife is buried.
Other attendees said they visit relatives in the cemetery and go to some of the events the funeral home hosts.
Guests ate dinner catered by Chipotle in a reception room decorated with plastic versions of marigolds and papel picado — the distinctive cut paper banners hung during holidays in Mexico.
Sisters Cindy Castillo and Noemi Hoffman were planning the funeral for their father Pablo Domingo Garza at Parklawn-Wood. The Día de los Muertos party wasn’t quite what they remembered from childhood or relatives celebrating in Mexico. But it was a moment to slow down in the midst of funeral preparations.
Hoffman won a round of bingo, and wasn’t quite sure what to do with the prize she drew — 5% off a burial plot in the cemetery.
Diwali in Newport News
The new year brought a festive atmosphere to the mandir in Newport News.
Families from all over Hampton Roads traveled to the Hindu temple, which is one of 110 in North America, to celebrate Diwali. They joined the roughly 1 billion people celebrating worldwide.
Preparations began early in the morning, said Khushbu Patel, a family doctor from Chesapeake who volunteered for event organizing.
Each family made a dish that day to bring to Diwali. More than 400 of them — all vegetarian, not containing eggs, garlic or onions — lined a stunningly elaborate altar in front of representations of Hindu gods.
A monk in orange robes spoke prayers from a dais to a packed room, with men seated on one side and women on the other. Teens, adults and small children sat in rows on the floor. Chairs lined the back wall for elderly people. Guests, including local politicians, community figures and university officials, also sat in chairs next to the dais.
The altar contained a miniature of a mandir constructed out of cookies by children in Sunday school. Candy bars in familiar wrappers that a child might collect during Halloween decorated the grounds of the cookie-temple.
“The kids are dealing with where they fit in, because a lot of them are first generation,” said Disha Brahmbhatt, who helped build the display.
“This is the candy that has memories for them. So they wanted to take that and build the temple out of it, because the temple is made of memories. It’s a lot more than brick and stone.”
The central prayer of the puja, or service, was the arti — an offering of light to the gods. Musical chimes and rhythmic drums backed up clapping and chants. Candles lit up in the crowd. A woman helped two young children move a diya, a candle in a dish, in a ceremonial motion, then handed the diya to someone else.
Various stories associated with Diwali include a god’s return from exile and the defeat of an evil deity. People from different regions tell different stories.
A constant for those across the South Asian diaspora who celebrate is what the holiday represents: The triumph of light over darkness, good over evil and knowledge over ignorance.
Light passed from person to person, setting the room aglow.
The new year is also a time to clean and start new financial logs, Tushar Mehta, another volunteer, said. But above all it’s a time to bring family together.
