If someone in your family died this year, you shouldn’t eat Pib on Hanal Pixán

Mérida, Yucatán, (November 02, 2021).- According to the beliefs of the Maya grandparents of Yucatán and the Peninsula, “if a family member died during the year, the PIB should NOT be done because doing so would burn the body of the deceased who is recently buried. That is why they have to wait until the following year to prepare the Pibs, if someone died recently in that home ”.

Other grandmothers from Campeche and Quintana Roo explain that even if you want to make the Pib in the same year that a relative died, when you bury it, it simply won’t cook, the dough will be watery and have a bad taste. For this reason, many modern families choose to bake it and not bury it as it is the traditional way to prepare it.

But, why shouldn’t the PIB be buried if a relative died this year?

The rite of burying it, of making it pib as they say in the Maya language, “is a symbol of the cycle of life, which dies and germinates again in life in the dark of the earth, comes back to life and everything is renewed, flesh dead of animals and enveloped by the corn dough, they always return to us in another form, a way that helps us to stay vitalized and renewed ”, they explain.

Another of the beliefs and customs around the Day of the Dead or the Food of Souls, is “that men with cold hands, called in Maya ‘SIS-K’AB’, should not be present when the pibs are buried, because these they will not be hot enough to cook. Each pib must have a special way of being accommodated between the burning stones and the meat must be only chicken, and not rooster, because when the souls arrive at the altar they will hear the crowing of the rooster that will scare them and they will leave the house in fear”.

Source: Grupo VX

The Yucatan Times Newsroom

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