Across the Caribbean, Nov. 2 is a day of commemoration, prayer, and remembrance of those who have died, practiced by adherents of multiple faiths and traditions. While many of us have just celebrated Halloween, an ancient European tradition rooted in the Celtic festival of Samhain, many Caribbean peoples are now celebrating All Souls Day, Fèt Gede, and the Day of the Dead.
Though the practices vary and their roots are a mixture of Indigenous, African, and European traditions and rituals, there is a commonality of intent: the honoring of our loved ones and ancestors who have passed on.
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The first day of November is celebrated around the globe as “All Saints Day” by Catholics and members of other Christian denominations. Journalist Hannah Gulics writes about the practice in the Caribbean:
The holiday is considered to be a Holy Day of Obligation for Catholics in which they must attend mass, pray and honor the saints. Catholics celebrating All Saints Day in the Caribbean are also expected to think of the holiday as a day of remembrance for the dead, bringing candle-lit offerings and flowers to family or friends’ grave sites. All Saints Day, or “La Toussaint” in the French-speaking Caribbean, is also a yearly reminder to beautify your loved one’s resting places, removing cobwebs, dusting off mausoleums and decorating with fresh coats of paint, flowers, photos and other mementos.
Though celebrated in some of the smaller islands like Martinique, Saint Barts and Saint Lucia, All Saints Day is a major holiday in Haiti, where an estimated 80% of the population is believed to be Roman Catholic. There, many flock to the Grand Cemetery in Port-au-Prince, with most Catholics bearing candles and food, and offering prayers for their loved ones. Others come to honor their ancestors by practicing Vodou with rituals and sacrifices.
In Martinique, All Saints Day is a time for extended family to visit and catch up, remembering departed loved ones together. It is often celebrated with family church outings in the morning, feasts later on, and bringing life and happiness to cemeteries, remembering the departed in a joyful and loving way rather than with sadness. Everyone wears white for mass and when going to pay their respects at the cemetery. White is symbolic as it references the color the formerly enslaved wore to funerals for relatives reported missing.
Directly following All Saints Day, Nov. 2, is known as “Day of the Dead” (Día de los Muertos in Spanish), All Souls Day, and Fèt Gede (or Fête Gédé) in French and Creole.
Author O’Leo LoKai shared his memories of French Catholic ceremonies in Trinidad for CaribbeanBeat:
I remember being bathed in the soft golden glow of a thousand flickering candles, as the crisp November night air carried the scent of flowers and burning wax. The cemetery became a labyrinth, as family and friends slowly filed between the graves and tombstones to visit their departed loved ones on All Souls’ Day. They stopped to say hello to each other, combining recitations of the rosary with the latest gossip.
We always came the day before to clean up the weathered tombstones, retouching them with white paint, weeding the little patches of grass. To me it felt something like Christmas. It was a celebration, after all, a time to show we cared for relatives and friends no longer with us, hoping that in some way they knew we were remembering them.
Jean Fils describes Fèt Gede for VisitHaiti:
In Haiti, each religion celebrates this differently: Catholics meet at church for a mass dedicated to the deceased, and Protestants come together too — but adherents of one of the country’s state religions — vodou — celebrate their deceased in a much more festive way. Although it overlaps with the concept and calendar space of Christian All Souls Day, Fête Gede traces its origins to African ancestral traditions, preserved across oceans and centuries in modern-day Haiti.
Gede shows are notoriously loud and extravagant, and can be seen nearly everywhere across Haiti, with Vodou practitioners dressed elaborately to represent the subset of lwa or loa — “spirits” — called gede — “the dead”. Gede may be invisible for the rest of the year, but during Fèt Gede, the dead definitely do not go unnoticed!
Vodou is a prominent feature of Haitian culture, and as a religion it has many practitioners — called vodouwizan — spread across the country. The religious syncretism between vodou and christianity has historically made it difficult to make an official estimate of numbers of practitioners, since most people who practice Haitian vodou to some extent also identify with a Christian denomination, but unofficial estimates suggest as much as 50% of Haitians practice vodou. For these vodouwizan, Fèt Gede is an important occasion to honor the gede.
Black Kos Editor David Reid wrote about Vodou and Afro-Caribbean religions in Black Kos:
Vodou (Voodou) is arguably both the most famous and most misunderstood Afro-Caribbean religion. Since Vodou’s emergence in the Caribbean during the era of the slave trade, the Haitian religion has been the subject of great controversy. As a result, Vodou has been suppressed, misinterpreted and misrepresented over many centuries, and the practitioners of Vodou have long been subjected to religious persecution because of this. Not surprisingly, mainstream media also portrays Vodou in a manner that is problematic and lacks historical context.
Historians have long recognized that Vodou played an important ideological role during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804). Yet, as incredulous as it may seem, there are those even today who argue that the ceremony at Bois Caiman, which sparked the Haitian Revolution, should be understood as a “deal made with Satan.” The most notable of these was the very influential religious leader Pat Robertson who made this claim in 2010 during one of his televised fundraisers. It is interesting to note, however, that the Haitian Catholic church has accepted Vodou for over thirty years.
[…]Popular conceptions about Vodou have also been informed by the film industry. For decades, many Hollywood productions have capitalized on stereotypes about Vodou. While it is clear to any historian that these films and television episodes are highly inaccurate, for many, the distinction between historical fact and sensationalized Hollywood fabrications and exaggerations is not all that clear
Haitian YouTuber Christherson Jeanty, from SeeJeanty Media, who is not a practitioner (he identifies himself as the son of a Baptist pastor) introduces and explains a Day of the Dead ceremony on the island.
In Belize, Day of the Dead ceremonies migrated from Mexico.
YouTuber The Hood Alchemist documents the building of a Day of the Dead altar in Belize.
The notes for the video explains:
Finados, meaning deceased or more affectionately, soul who has passed. Finados is a tradition and celebration that links together Latin America, Spanish culture and Indigenous peoples. You may be familiar with Dia De Los Muertos, yet in places like Brazil and the Caribbean country of Belize, the people remember this cultural practice as Finados. To up hold Indigenous roots in a world so far removed and influenced by colonization, still remains to be quite a sticky balance, especially when it comes to matters of the dead. In this video we will follow the living of a Mestizo community in Western Belize, as they honor the souls of the dead in a world dying to remember tradition.
Do you or your family members celebrate this holiday? Let us know in the comments section below, and join me for the weekly Caribbean News Roundup.
