Día de Muertos and Halloween fall days apart and both use skulls, but they are different holidays, with a different origin and a different purpose. Halloween is October 31. Día de Muertos runs from October 27 to November 2, and its main day is November 2.

Arturo, who teaches with us at Speak Better Spanish and lives in Monterrey, is direct about it: the origin of Día de Muertos has nothing to do with Halloween.

The difference at a glance

	Halloween	Día de Muertos
Main date	October 31	November 2 (the days start October 27)
Origin	Samhain, a Celtic harvest festival	Indigenous rites blended with Catholic feasts
Purpose	Costumes, candy and scares	Welcoming back the souls of loved ones
Mood	Fear: ghosts, vampires, monsters	Familiarity with death, and celebration
Children	“Dulce o truco” on October 31	Asking for “calaverita” on November 1

Where Halloween comes from

“Most historians trace the earliest origins of Halloween to Samhain, a Celtic harvest festival,” explains NASA Earth Observatory. In the eighth century, November 1 was set as All Saints Day. All Saints Day used to be called All Hallows Day, and that gave Halloween, All Hallows Eve, its name.

Where Día de Muertos comes from

Arturo explains it as sincretismo: beliefs about honoring the dead that were already here before the Spanish arrived, blended with the Catholic Día de Todos los Santos. UNESCO describes it the same way, as “the fusion of pre-Hispanic religious rites and Catholic feasts,” and says it “commemorates the transitory return to Earth of deceased relatives and loved ones.”

Historians still debate how much of it is pre-Hispanic. A UNAM history professor quoted by Uno TV calls it a celebration shaped by Spanish influence and blended with Indigenous rituals. Either way, it is a blend, not a copy of Halloween.

The full story, and the days in order, are in our Día de Muertos guide.

What Mexicans find strange about the comparison

Calling Día de Muertos “the Mexican Halloween” gets the mood backwards. Guillermo Meneses, a researcher at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, put it this way to EFE: Halloween encourages fear of death, of terror, ghosts, vampires and monsters, while Día de Muertos encourages familiarity with death.

Arturo says the same from the inside. Death is connected with sadness, and when someone dies in Mexico there is mourning, as in almost every country. But Día de Muertos itself is a celebration, about remembering people, not about sadness or pain.

He also pushes back on the idea that it is new. Its recognition by the UN and the film Coco made it famous recently, but the tradition is much older. Its visibility is what is new.

Do Mexicans celebrate Halloween too?

Many do. N+ notes that it has become customary in Mexico to celebrate both. Meneses describes the last 20 to 30 years as a clash between the two holidays, and says that in border cities altars and Halloween now coexist (EFE).

The clearest example is what children do. In Mexico the day to ask for “calaverita” is November 1, when children in costumes go around asking for candy and money (Vanguardia). Uno TV traces the door-to-door candy part to influence from the United States.

Practice Spanish with a Native Mexican Teacher

Knowing what a tradition means changes what you can talk about. If you want to practice conversations like this one with a native Mexican teacher, we run live small-group Spanish conversation classes throughout the year: Spanish Group Conversation Classes.

For the full picture of the holiday, read our Día de Muertos guide.