Syncretism (Greek syncretismus = union of communities) reconciles different and even opposing world views, beliefs, traditions and other cultural elements. Syncretism fuses and combines these cultural elements, practices and traditions to enrich, renew and create new expressions.  Día de los Muertos is a wonderful example of a syncretism that has occurred over thousands of years. A common belief about this tradition is that only the pre-Colombian and Christian cultures fused, and generally other influences and changes are ignored. Although the European impact on the Day of the Dead was tremendous, reducing it from various periods and many days throughout the year to only two days, the festivities were so embedded in the native cultures that they survived. Día de los Muertos, by the time the European cultures arrived, had merged many ancestral Mesoamerican cultures. This festivities show that syncretism is particularly important in cultural expressions like theology, mythology, and the representational arts, all of the present in the contemporary regional and international diversity of Día de los Muertos.