The old Celtic celebration of Samhain is held at the half-way point between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. It marks the end of the harvest and ushers in the darker-half of the year. It's also the origin of our Halloween (as I was informed by a friend recently.) Paralleling that in the new world, Mictlantecuhtli is the Aztec god of the underworld (aren't you glad I'm learning Scandanavian myths at the moment and not Mesoamerican) and Aztecs held celebrtions for him and those who had died around this time of the year. So the basis for Halloween and the Day of the Dead are different though both 'holidays' were held in the Autumn. The Roman Catholic church started holding feasts for all Christian martyrs around Easter but in the 9th century, when the religion came to the English Islands, the church changed All Saint's Day to coincide w/ Samhain. A shameless but effective program to entice pagans with a religious celebration instead of Celtic seasonal rites. Pretty much the same thing happened when they came to Mexico. However you can still see the Celtic imagery in Halloween and the Aztec influences on The Day of the Dead.
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