Lights, Jazz, & Marigolds

Two ancient traditions, born oceans apart, meet under one sky and one flower: Día de los Muertos and Diwali, the Festival of Lights.

Lights, Jazz, & Marigolds!
A Queens Celebration of Culture, Community & Color

The Woodhaven Art Circle in partnership with Friends of Maple Grove invite you to join us in celebrating community, culture and color in the heart of the World’s Borough. Two ancient traditions, born oceans apart, meet under one sky: Día de los Muertos and Diwali, the Festival of Lights.

Both hold the marigold sacred. In Mexican tradition, the flower's fiery orange is said to guide spirits home with its color and scent, a bridge between the living and those we remember. Across the world in South Asian tradition, marigolds mark celebration and renewal, strung into garlands that welcome light over darkness, knowledge over ignorance, hope over hardship. The flower’s warm hue is said to mirror the glow of lights themselves. Same flower, same instinct: to turn memory and joy into something you can see, smell, and hold in your hands.

This year, local school kids bring that spirit to life with a community-built ofrenda — photos, marigolds, and small treasures honoring loved ones — a reminder that remembrance is a language every culture speaks.

Tying it all together there will be live music and a hands-on floral rangoli demonstration.

Artists also offer a nod to the Jazz age, an era where music became the gathering place for cultures colliding, blending and building something new. That same spirit of cultural crossroads lives on tonight at Friends of Maple Grove. Come celebrate the light we all carry, and the light we carry for each other.