Images courtesy of the Boeckmann Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies

Personally, if I were lounging around my house in late October and someone came in and said, "Hello, your socks don't match, and by the way, your dead grandmother's ghost is going to arrive in two weeks, and she's staying for two days," I'd jump up, spilling my bon-bons, and shriek. And not just because I pride myself on wearing matching socks.

Then again, I'm not Mexican. If I were, then the news that Grandma was coming to visit would make me get up, put on an apron, and get to work cooking up a Grandma-style feast.

Here's the deal: Every November 1 and 2, Mexico celebrates El Dia de los Muertos, a.k.a. The Day of the Dead. And unlike Halloween, this is not a spooky, scary holiday, filled with goblins and spiders and special Simpsons episodes. Instead, it's a real fiesta, the happy, good-cheer kind, as families reunite with their absent relatives. The markets are filled with awesome death kitsch: paper-mâché skeletons dressed as members of a mariachi band; sugared skulls and coffins emblazoned with the names of the dead -- and the living, since we've all got skulls, whether covered in skin or not; skull masks, and white face-paint, so you can emulate the dead yourself. Now, that's my kind of party.

Celebrations differ from town to town, natch. In Higaldo, for instance, dead children are celebrated first and dead adults on the second day. In Misqui, everyone keeps their doors wide open, so that visitors -- whether friends or tourists, it doesn't seem to matter -- can come in and admire the elaborate altars, decorated with stunning orange flowers (called Zilpazuchil) and with all the favorite foods and drinks of the absent relative. But across the board, families bring huge picnics to the cemetery, and everyone stays there all night, eating and drinking.

Many Mexicans admit that it can be a bit strange, on first encounter. "All life in Mexico is circulated around death," says Jaime Palacios, co-owner and proprietor of Veracruz, a charming restaurant in Brooklyn's groovy Williamsburg neighborhood. "It's in all the songs -- it's a culture based on death. It's the pre-Columbian ideas, mixed with ideas from Spain. And it becomes a strange mix, in the popular culture. The result is: the happy dead." You know. Like Casper. He stresses that food is at the center of the holiday, too: "You're keeping the family together, even after death, all around the dinner table. As with every ethnic group, the Mexican family comes together around the food."

Looking to celebrate the Day of the Dead in your town? Here's a selection of Day of the Dead events in some of our cities. Or check your local papers for stuff we missed, and let us know all about it! San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York

On the altar itself, there's often a good dinner (enchiladas, a mole sauce perhaps), plus sweet things: cane sugar, tamarind, even Halloween candy that the kids pull out of their Trick or Treat bags to share with their dead grandparents. And of course, there's Pulche, the fermented cactus juice that is the basis for Mezcal, as well as rum and tequila. And there are pictures of the dead, and candles, and skulls, and those massive orange flowers. All together, it's an overpowering feast of sights, smells, and of course, tastes.

And then there's the Pan de Muertos, which is the whole reason I get to write this article. The Bread of the Dead is made differently in every town, sometimes in a regular loaf decorated with bones (made of dough, not pulled from the graveyard), sometimes molded into people-shapes, and sometimes with entire hard-boiled eggs baked into the loaf. But across the board, they all seem to be slightly sweet, with hints of orange and anise; the result is a light and airy cross between bread and cake.

Taken as a whole, El Dia de los Muertos -- the skulls, the songs, the food -- is an oddly comforting holiday. Watching the people file up the hills toward the cemeteries with their picnics, it occurred to me that in American society, it's not only terrifying, it's almost shameful or embarrassing to become sick and die. In contrast, Mexican society embraces death; it's just the thing that comes after life, a natural progression. It's part of life, in fact. And it's awfully nice to know that you'll still be welcome at the table there -- even when you're gone.