November begins with Day of the Dead altars laden with photos of our beloveds and their favorite foods and drinks. Maybe Pablo was humble about his soccer playing, but there is his uniform displayed by his worn-out shoes. Margarita’s cooking caserola is on the altar with her hand-carved wooden stirring spoon. In Mexico, tamales pile up for the night when family and friends come by to remember, to call the names, to tell the stories in the corner where an uncle is in charge of pouring the spiked punch into the clay mugs for the adults.

November in the north brings another ritual – hunting, specifically, deer hunting. As with most rituals, the passing of time clouds the origin stories. Halloween dates back to the Druids and building fires at each end of town to keep out the evil spirits. Day of the Dead invokes the Aztec dog, the escuintle, guiding departed souls to cross the river of death, now to return via marigold paths leading them home to their families. Deer hunting was a necessity, preceding any European stepping foot on North American shores.

November hunts were to fill larders for the long winters, an act of survival. I always felt my family would survive anything, because, before my father became a clinical psychologist, he trapped enough to pay for his college, he fished and put filets in the frying pan, and his forays into the forests brought back an array of game for mealtime, the largest being – deer. He had tasted porcupine, beaver, mallards, and probably a squirrel, but venison was the delicacy, especially if the deer had been “corn” fed in the fields. 

November also hosts another ritual – elections. I write this on election day, too early for any results. In 2000, I accompanied Augsburg College Global Ed to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where we served as election observers. In Mexico, the president gets a one-time term of six years. There are three major parties, the PRI, (Institutional Revolutionary Party), PAN (National Action Party), and PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution). That year was pivotal. The country held its proverbial breath. Even the United States was on alert. Would there be a peaceful transfer of power if PAN won over PRI, the political party that had controlled Mexico since Francisco Madero in 1911?

A quick back story on that development includes the word, dedismo – a pointing of the finger. Each PRI President “pointed the finger” at he-who-would-be the successor. Each election, many T-shirts, tortillas, and promises of electricity for your village accompanied campaign speeches. Decades passed and corruption wove itself into the expected behaviors of elected officials up to and including the president. Yet, in 2000, Vicente Fox Quesada, the PAN presidential candidate, stepped into the fray with his cowboy boots and Coca-Cola company, challenging the PRI’s grip over Mexico.