Día de los Muertos on Monday in Las Vegas: Free Palm Celebrations on Eastern Avenue and Downtown, With a Coco Screening and a 6 p.m. Mass
The holiday's second day has two free neighborhood celebrations left on the calendar. Palm Eastern hosts mariachi, Aztec dancers and complimentary tamales from 5 to 8 p.m., and Palm Downtown opens its ofrenda at 8 a.m., screens Coco at about 5 p.m. and celebrates Mass at 6 — both free and open to the public.
Día de los Muertos runs two days in Las Vegas, and Monday's celebrations move into the neighborhoods. Palm Mortuaries & Cemeteries closes its annual community festivals with two free Monday events, after Sunday's gathering at its Northwest location. Palm Eastern, at 7600 South Eastern Avenue, celebrates from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. with live mariachi music, Aztec dancers, sugar skull crafts, children's face painting and traditional ofrendas — and the food is part of the welcome: complimentary tamales, Mexican hot chocolate and pan de muerto, with tacos available for purchase from two on-site food trucks, according to Palm's announcement.
Downtown starts earlier and ends in procession. At Palm Downtown, 1325 North Main Street, the community ofrenda opens at about 8 a.m. for families to add photographs and meaningful items, and the celebration itself runs from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. with face painting, cookies and hot cocoa on the Dreams Patio and a screening of Disney-Pixar's Coco at approximately 5 p.m. A Mass follows at 6 p.m. in the mortuary's small chapel, then a procession led by traditional dancers, with a priest offering blessings to guests throughout the cemetery afterward.
Both events are free and open to the public, and both are built around the same centerpiece as the weekend's bigger festivals: the ofrenda, the altar of photographs and mementos through which families honor people who have died. Palm says its annual celebrations draw thousands of community members across the three locations. For families who spent Sunday at the Civic Center, Llama Lot or Winchester, Monday offers the quieter version of the same tradition — closer to home, at cemetery grounds where many of the remembered are actually laid to rest.
