[A humble request: If you can, please donate to help me carry on tracing word histories. Thank you.]
The following definition of—and note on—the expression sugar skull are from the Oxford English Dictionary (online edition, March 2025):
A decorative representation of a human skull or skeleton, originally crafted from sugar but now also sometimes from clay, made for, or associated with, the Mexican celebration, Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead).
Originally intended to be eaten and often given to children as a gift around Día de Muertos, sugar skulls are now frequently designed primarily as decorative items. They are sometimes left as offerings on altars, tombs, etc.
The expression sugar skull occurs, for example, in Long night of the soul, on Mexico’s Day of the Dead, by Barbara Kastelein, published in The Scotsman (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of Saturday 26th October 2002 [The Weekend section: page 16, column 3]:
Roman Catholic tradition holds that, on the night of 1 November, church bells should toll in mourning for departed souls and it is customary for alms to be handed out on All Souls’ Day. In Europe this practice was known as “souling,” when early Christians begged for sweet bread called “soul cakes,” promising in return prayers for the dead relatives of the donors.
This is thought to be the origin of “trick or treating” at Hallowe’en. Before Hallowe’en made its presence felt in Mexico, children here used Day of the Dead to beg passersby for their muertito (little dead ones), traditionally asking for sweets and items of food. The sweet bread, fruits and sugar skulls piled high in Mexican markets and bakeries at this time also link Day of the Dead traditions with those of other Catholic countries, evolved from the benevolent customs of the fiesta. In Mexico needy members of the community will walk between tombs at this time of year to pray for the deceased in exchange for food.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the expression sugar skull that I have found:
1-: From Life in Mexico during a residence of two years in that country (Boston (Massachusetts): Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1843), by the travel writer Frances Erskine Inglis (1804-1882) [Volume 2, Letter 47, page 297]:
[10th November 1840].—[…] Last Sunday was the festival of All Saints; on the evening of which day, we walked out under the portales, with M. and Madame de ——, —— Minister and his wife, to look at the illumination, and at the numerous booths filled with sugar-skulls, &c.; temptingly ranged in grinning rows, to the great edification of the children.
2-: From Trifles, published in The Saturday Review of Politics, Literature, Science, and Art (London, England) of Saturday 7th September 1867 [page 307, column 1]:
Trifles are the natural refuge from austerities, and from all fears beyond the mind’s calibre; in some way or other these are smothered in them. Hence it is that we “make trifles of terrors,” as the Mexican confectioners disarm purgatory of its horrors by turning the image of death itself into a sweetmeat on All Souls’ Day, and exhibiting long grinning rows of sugar skulls for the children.
3-: From Our Sister Republic—IV., on Mexico, by Emily Pierce, published in The Cultivator & Country Gentleman (Albany, New York, USA) of Thursday 7th February 1884 [page 116, column 4]:
The streets afforded an infinite fund of entertainment. Gay booths on either hand, offering every variety of fruit and sweet, from the familiar peanut to the gaily painted sugar skulls, which mummy-like old women vended, smiling a wheedling smile, and crying, “Skulls, Niña, skulls!” All happy—eating, drinking and gambling.
4-: From a correspondence from Mexico City, published in The Open Court. A Fortnightly Journal (Chicago, Illinois, USA) of Thursday 31st March 1887 [page 102, column 2]:
“The day after the Feast of All Saints (which of course was a church celebration) was the day of the dead. I don’t know whether it was to remind people of their mortality or not, but in a way they seemed to take a cheerful view of it. There were booths for the sale of toys and confectionery all round the Plaza, and the toys were little hearses, and dolls in mourning dresses, and dancing-skeletons; and the confectionery shops had sugar skulls and thigh bones conspicuously displayed for sale. The effect was, on the whole, not as ghastly as might have been expected.”
5-: From Current Topics, published in the Democrat and Chronicle (Rochester, New York, USA) of Wednesday 14th November 1888 [page 5, column 1]:
They have great doings in the City of Mexico upon All Souls’ and All Saints’ days. Everybody takes holiday. The city is illuminated and theatres and the opera offer special programmes. Beyond and above all, the streets are thronged with sellers of sugar skulls, wooden skulls, bone skulls, wire and wooden skeletons worked by a string, the curious cake called “death bread,” memorial wreaths and garlands, and a hundred other weird and ghastly and ghostly things.
word histories 