WATSONVILLE — Art teachers and young students helped keep a Mexican tradition alive Saturday as they shaped and decorated masks in honor of “Dia de los Muertos,” the Day of the Dead.

The morning mask-making event drew 25 students, from pre-school to high-school age, all of them vigorously adding coats of paint to horned, smiling faces.

The event took place in a classroom at Callaghan Park off Freedom Boulevard.

Some masks reflected modern American culture. Others looked traditional, as if the young artists were taking their cues directly from ancestors in Mexico.

The children put the masks together with little prompting or instruction, meaning the traditional designs were largely coincidental.

But artist Graciela Vega, who helped put Saturday’s event together, believes it’s more than that.

“It has something to do with collective memory,” she said. “I gave them no set instructions. I didn’t even have pictures. The kids went ahead and made it up.”

Dia de los Muertos has nothing to do with Halloween, accept for the fact both days may be tied to ancient harvest festivals, Vega said. While All Hallow’s Eve is a European tradition, the Day of the Dead began with the indigenous people of Mexico.

People usually celebrate Nov. 1 or 2, or sometimes both days. It’s a time for people to remember their ancestors, to build altars in homes that are then covered with pictures and with food the loved one enjoyed. Families go to the cemetery, taking flowers, food and perhaps some hot chocolate or a corn-based drink called atole.

The children were enthusiastic Saturday, especially 4-year-old Dyani Jacobo, who sat proudly with her mask of a creature with four horns growing out of its head.

She had already shaped the mask in clay and overlaid it with a combination of crushed newspaper and glue, then added paint, with help from adult supervisors.

“I’m going to put some feathers and glitter,” she said, pointing to the mask. “I’m going to put some white right there.”

While Jacobo’s mask looked traditional, 13-year-old middle school student Isaac Figueroa took his cues from Darth Maul in the new “Star Wars” movie and from the video game “Mortal Kombat” when putting his mask together.

It was a frightful creature, with oversized almond eyes, the kind pop-art extraterrestrials usually have.

Another student, 14-year-old Charles Willis, made a lion’s face, which he will use in a high school drama production based on Greek mythology. He’d already finished making part of the face, and was contemplating how to put on a mane.

“I think I’ll use feathers,” he said.

Clearly the kids were having fun, and there was nothing morbid about their activities, in spite of the day’s name.

“Some people are put off by ‘dead,” so the theme of this festival is family remembrance,” said Liz Reid of the Pajaro Valley Arts Council, which is putting on the Dia de los Muertos arts event. “It’s really not focusing on death. People are encouraged to talk to their grandparents about how they lived.”