Techno and traditional celebrations of the Day of the Dead can be found across the country from Trinity Wall Street in New York City to Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, Arizona.
Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City built an Altar of Remembrance for the celebration of Day of the Dead using the internet, Facebook and Twitter according to DNAinfo
… Trinity Church is turning to a new medium to help people remember those they have lost: the Internet.
The church’s first-ever online Altar of Remembrance invites people from around the world to use Facebook and Twitter (hashtag #allsouls) to submit names, photos and memories of their loved ones.
More than 50 images and stories have poured in over the past several days, including a father recalling his 7-year-old daughter’s “pure soul and love [of] life,” and a young woman remembering her grandmother, “who was beautiful, elegant, and didn’t know how to whisper in church.”
Many of the posts on the altar’s Facebook page have attracted comments from friends and strangers alike, from condolences to remarks on the resemblance between family members.
Trinity Wall Street is also building a physical Altar of Remembrance, lit by candles, for All Souls’ Day. (Leah Reddy/Trinity Wall Street)
“This is tapping into a hunger,” said Rev. Daniel Simons, priest of pilgrimage at Trinity Church. “People want to connect with their own lives, with their spirituality, with the people who came before them.”
The Rt. Rev. Pierre Whalon writes on All Souls, especially your own:
How would you define your diocese’s soul? It is always a good question to ask a parish who would notice were it suddenly to disappear. What would be the consequence if your diocese were suddenly to vanish? Who would notice? “The Church is the only society on earth that exists for the benefit of non-members,” Archbishop William Temple famously remarked. What “non-members” would be affected?
At Trinity Cathedral in Phoenix, there will be a much more traditional celebration. The Rev. Canon Carmen Guerrero (Latino Missioner for the Diocese of Arizonaand President of the newly formed Coalition of Episcopal Latinos) writes the following description of the liturgies there:
There is a lot of music with the Mariachi band leading a procession which can go for blocks or just around a church. The celebration is started with prayers in the church, a blessing of the Altar of the Dead with Holy Water, which is also sprinkled on all the participants, and then the procession begins and ends at a specified place on the church grounds where the names of the dead are called out and then placed on a brazier and offered to God in smoke.
Images of the altar before the service can be viewed in an online gallery here.