Every year,..the weekend after Easter (Orthadox Easter), the Romanians celebrate for the dead by eating and they stick a candle in plates of the same food they eat for lunch for the dead.
I'm not sure if the food we ate were traditional foods:
Sarmaluta (small bundles of savory grounded meat, wrapped in grape leaves and grilled).
Rice with sugar and lemon and orange peel.
Snizle (I think it's German originated? and it's pork in batter, deep fried.
Chicken boiled in oil with carrots, potatoes, salt, cabbage, and some spices.
In Chinese culture we do a similar thing in the spring, where we take prepared food: boiled eggs, deep fried salted pork, a whole chicken, alcohol, sugar can, chinese bread, and fireworks and we put the food over the grave (to symbolize offering the spirit or essence of the food to our ancestors), and then we eat the food and we explode the firecrackers (to ward off bad spirits) and we burn fake money and fake cloth (so the essence of the material can go to the ancestors).
I don't think there's a day to celebrate ancestors in the US holiday calendar, and if there is I've never heard of it or celebrated it.
