What is worshipped is God’s conquering of death, which allows that bond to go on forever. The idea of a recognition of the community of the living and the dead, a spiritual community that exceeds the community we see in the material world of our present lives, is deeply consistent with Christianity.

The Christian underpinnings of the Day of the Dead are what make it of interest to those who are, for good reasons, uninterested in multiculturalism in its current relativist and divisive forms. For they reveal a ritual deeply consonant with the Christian view that death is not the end and that our loving bond to those who have gone before us is perhaps the most important social tie we have in this world.

A love for the past and for those who came before us is consistent with a holistic view of the human world. That world is made of three communities: those here now, those who have lived and died and await us, and those yet to come. Our unity is in the spiritual life that animates us all, and the truth of the Christian claims about life and death are not merely one more claim in Relativism Land. They are a truth that unites believers across cultures and time. Day of the Dead is a wonderful opportunity to recall this unity.