Day of the Dead Coloring Pages

Día de Muertos is not a sad holiday and not a Mexican Halloween. It is a family reunion across the line between the living and the dead, full of flowers, food and music. These Day of the Dead coloring pages follow that spirit: the skeletons here, the calacas, are cheerful, busy and very much at home.

The sugar skulls come in every style: framed by flowers, laid over a mandala of petals, shaped like a heart among roses, crowned with daisies or with roses, decorated with a spiderweb, patterned with geometric shapes, and hanging from a beam as a piñata. Two sugar skull masks with ribbons rest on a bench. La Catrina stands in her wide feathered hat, a girl with Catrina face paint holds a candle, and a skeleton seamstress sews a ruffled dress fit for her.

The calacas live full lives. A couple dances, she in ruffles and he in a top hat, and another rides a tandem bicycle covered in flowers. A mariachi plays the guitar, a trumpet player and a maraca player strike up a tune, and musicians lead a street procession with a skeleton dog on a leash. A baker pulls pan de muerto out of a brick oven, a woman grinds cacao on a stone metate, a gardener waters pots of marigolds, a fisherman sits in a rowboat under paper lanterns, a child swings under a blossoming tree, two children fly kites near a hillside chapel, and a skeleton family shares dinner around a table with grandmother at the head. A skeleton horse pulls a cart of flowers and a skeleton cat sits on a bed of marigolds.

The ofrenda has its own pages: one under an arch of marigolds, one built in tiers with bread, fruit, bowls and candles. Papel picado hangs over a narrow alley, an archway opens onto a street carpeted with petals and candles, a punched tin lantern glows, a rooster stands among marigold garlands, a steaming clay olla sits beside a bowl of tropical fruit, and a church facade is lined with pots of marigolds.

What the Day of the Dead is

Día de Muertos is celebrated mainly in Mexico on November 1 and 2, with roots in both Indigenous traditions and the Catholic feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Families believe the souls of their dead come home to visit for these days. November 1 is often set aside for children who have died, and November 2 for adults. Families clean and decorate graves, gather in cemeteries with food and music, and build an ofrenda at home to welcome their loved ones back. UNESCO recognizes the celebration as part of the world's intangible cultural heritage.

What goes on an ofrenda

Every object on an altar has a purpose, which makes the ofrenda pages a good way to learn them:

• Photos of the people being remembered.
• Cempasúchil, orange marigolds, whose color and scent are said to guide the souls home. Petals are often laid in a path.
• Candles, to light the way.
• Pan de muerto, a sweet round bread topped with dough shaped like bones.
• Sugar skulls, often with a name written across the forehead.
• Water for the thirsty traveler, salt, and the favorite foods and drinks of the dead.
• Papel picado, tissue paper cut into lacy patterns, whose flutter is said to show the souls passing.

La Catrina

The elegant skeleton in a big feathered hat began as a satirical print by the Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada, around 1910, mocking people who pretended to be grander than they were. The painter Diego Rivera later put her in a famous mural and gave her the name Catrina, from catrín, a dandy. Today she is the best-known face of the holiday, and dressing up as her is a tradition of its own.

Colors of the Day of the Dead

This is a holiday made for bright color. Marigolds are deep orange and gold. Sugar skulls are white with icing in pink, turquoise, green, yellow and purple. Papel picado comes in every tissue color at once: magenta, orange, lime, sky blue, purple. Purple and magenta also appear as flowers on the altar, beside the marigolds. On the skull pages, color the eye sockets in a strong color and keep the teeth white, and the face comes alive.

Simple skulls and busy altars

The simplest pages keep one skull or one figure large on the page. Quick to color, above the grid, begins with:

The most detailed are the altars, the flower frames and the patterned skulls. Lots of detail begins with:

• Sugar skull and flowers
• Sugar skull mandala
• Heart sugar skull

Remembering together

These pages can be part of a gentle conversation with children about someone they miss, which is what the holiday is about. A child can color a sugar skull and write the name of a grandparent or a pet across the forehead, or draw that person's favorite food on the table of the ofrenda page. In the classroom, the ofrenda list above makes a good matching activity with the pages.

Printing the celebration

Every page is a free A4 PDF drawn at 300 dpi. A4 prints at full size, and on US Letter "fit to page" shrinks the drawing by about six percent so every petal stays on the paper. The printing guide shows the setting. Add to pack gathers a whole ofrenda of pages into one file. The Halloween coloring pages and pumpkin coloring pages cover the night before, the mandala coloring pages share the love of pattern, and every other celebration is in the holiday coloring pages.