After reading around a bit about this, it seems to make more and more sense. Day of the Dead celebrations serve a practical purpose (as well as an emotional one) as they use this time to clean up the cemeteries and the graves. Here is some of what I found......
"The Day of the Dead is celebrated in both public and private spaces. It is most often celebrated in homes and graveyards.
In homes, people create altars to honor their deceased loved ones. In some places it is common to allow guests to enter the house to view the altar. In graveyards, families clean the graves of their loved ones, which they then decorate with flowers, photos, candles, foods and drinks. People stay up all night in the graveyards, socializing and telling funny stories about their dead ancestors. Musicians are hired to stroll through the graveyard, playing the favorite songs of the dead. In the public sphere, Day of the Dead celebrations can also take the form of street parties, parades, and festivals on university campuses with lots of top spinning."
Well, maybe I added those last five words.
