September, October and November are special months in San Miguel.
First, the whole month of September is one big fiesta, leading up to these two special events:
– Independence Day, celebrated with the reading of the “El Grito” (Cry of Independence) at 11 pm from the balcony of Colonel Allende’s house in the Jardin on the night Sept 15, with fireworks afterwards over the top of the Parroquia church and special ceremonies and parades held all through the next day on Sept 16
– Festival de San Miguel, beginning on Sept 29 with daylong activities in the Jardin to mark the day of Archangel San Miguel, the patron saint of the city, and this year continuing into the early morning hours of Oct 3, the following Saturday, with the Alborada (the pre-dawn re-enactment of San Miguel’s battle with the devil, held in front of La Parroquia)
Visitors to San Miguel during September will notice that almost every building (public and private) is adorned with a Mexican flag or at least a banner bearing the national colors of red/white/green. The colorful decorations stay in place for the whole month.
Then, during the latter weeks of October, preparations are underway for the celebration of the Day of the Dead, November 2. Small stalls are erected in the Plaza Civica, north of the Jardin, where vendors sell homemade alfreniques (sugar figurines), orange candles, marigolds, papier-mache skeletons and other traditional folkart items used in the creation of ofrendas, the altars Mexicans build to honor their dead relatives. Special displays will be set up in the Jardin, and many homes in Centro open their doors so that family ofrendas are visible. The old cemetery at the bottom of Callejon de los Muertos in the western part of Centro is unlocked a few days prior, so people can enter to dress up the gravesites in honor of their ancestors.