Halloween Bash Panel: 'Banquet for the Dead'

To feed the dead is to confess they are never truly gone. Across centuries and cultures, the living have set the table for their ancestors, inviting spirits to dine at the threshold between worlds. The Romans poured wine into the cracks of family tombs, sending crimson rivers into the earth. The Egyptians laid out dazzling feasts for their departed, banquets that rivaled the meals of kings. In India, the ritual of shradh continues still, with rice, milk, and water offered in acts of reverence and remembrance. And in Mexico, the air fills with the fragrance of marigolds, sugar skulls, and pan de muerto, welcoming souls back for one luminous night of reunion.

These offerings are never just tokens. They are negotiations, affirmations, whispered messages across the veil. To feed the dead is to defy silence, to insist on kinship that death cannot erase. Around the banquet table, grief becomes ritual, and…