A day to remember

Every year on Nov. 2, Lucrecia and Julia Franco make their father’s favorite dish: chicken with mole sauce.

Their father Catalino Franco has been dead for 12 years, but on El Dia de Los Muertos or Day of the Dead, they hope he comes back and partakes of food and drink placed on an altar set up to remember the dead at St. Joachim Catholic Church in Costa Mesa.

Preparations for the altar begin days before Nov. 2 (All Souls’ Day), the day of the holiday that has its roots in Mexico and parts of Latin America. The holiday is also celebrated on Nov. 1 (All Saints’ Day).

The Franco sisters began to decorate the two-tier altar on Saturday. Along with statues of saints, vases of orange and yellow chrysanthemums, fruit and Mexican bread, a photo of their father, and one of Rev. Kenneth Krause, who died in the late 1990s, is placed on the altar. Krause was a former pastor at the church.

The Day of the Dead is celebrated in Mexico, parts of Latin America, and now in the U.S. by immigrants like the Franco sisters, who have lived in Costa Mesa since the 1980s.

The holiday is a blend of pre-Columbian and Spanish Roman Catholic traditions.

“It’s a mixture of Aztec beliefs and Catholic beliefs,” Julia Franco said.

The belief that the dead come back to eat and drink with family is an Aztec belief. Praying for the dead person’s soul is a Catholic one.