All Saints' Day (1 November)

The name of the feast

The Roman Missal entitles the Mass of 1 November In festo Omnium Sanctorum, "on the feast of All Saints", and the official calendar gives it the title of Solemnity of All Saints (Sollemnitas Omnium Sanctorum): the highest rank in the calendar, that of Christmas, Easter, the Assumption and Pentecost^[15][16]. The French word Toussaint comes from Old French feste de Toz Sainz, "feast of all the saints", a translation of the medieval Latin festum omnium sanctorum: the earliest texts attest it around 1135 (feste Toz Sainz in the Couronnement de Louis) and around 1260 (le jour de la Touz Sainz)^[17]. The popular name thus says exactly what the Latin name says: it is not the feast of one saint, it is the feast of all the saints.

English keeps the same logic in another form: All Saints' Day, whose eve — All Hallows' Eve — gave the word Halloween^[18]. The evening of 31 October is so called because 1 November is All Saints' Day, and not the other way round.

The rank: a solemnity

In the liturgical year, All Saints' Day is a solemnity: Mass with the Gloria and the Credo, proper readings that never change from one year to the next, First Vespers the previous evening, and celebration extending through the Office of Readings, Lauds and Vespers of the day^[19][20]. The liturgical colour is white, the colour of the feasts of the Lord, of the Virgin and of non-martyr saints^[21].

The Roman calendar counts few solemnities of saints: most saints are celebrated at the rank of memorial or feast. All Saints' Day is an exception because it celebrates no one in particular: it honours together the entire heavenly court, "all the saints who shone upon the earth, of all times and all places, known and unknown" — this is how the Eastern Churches define their own feast of All Saints^[22]. The Second Vatican Council gives the theological reason for this primacy: it is "above all in the sacred liturgy that our union with the Church in heaven is realised in the highest way", when the redeemed "from every tribe, tongue, people and nation, gathered into the one Church, glorify, in one unanimous song of praise, the one God in three Persons"^[23].

A holy day of obligation

The Code of Canon Law places All Saints' Day among the feasts on which, "as on Sundays", the faithful "are bound by the obligation of participating in Mass" and of abstaining from work incompatible with that day^[24]. Along with Christmas, the Ascension and the Assumption, it is one of the four holy days of obligation retained in France since the indult of Cardinal Caprara of 9 April 1802, published by consular decree of 19 April 1802: "The feast days to be celebrated in France, besides Sundays, are: the Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Ascension, the Assumption of the Most Holy Virgin, the feast of All Saints"^[25]. That is why 1 November has remained in France a non-working public holiday, listed in the Labour Code alongside 25 December, 15 August and Easter Monday^[26].

In practice, All Saints' Day "replaces" whatever it meets: if 1 November falls on a Sunday — as in 2026 — the solemnity takes the place of the Sunday in Ordinary Time, with its own proper readings and not those of the Sunday^[27]. And the evening Mass of 31 October, after First Vespers, is already the Mass of the feast: as with Sundays, the obligation can be fulfilled from the previous evening^[28].

Why 1 November?

Neither the Gospel nor the Apostles fix a date for honouring all the saints together: 1 November is a choice of the Church, matured between the 7th and 9th centuries, whose history is recounted further on in this article. Rome first celebrated All Saints on 13 May, the day of the dedication of the Pantheon turned into a church^[29]; the British Isles already celebrated the feast at the calends of November around the year 800^[30]; and it was this autumn date that Emperor Louis the Pious extended to the whole West in 835^[31]. The precise reasons for the choice of autumn are stated by no document of the period: historians merely note that after the work in the fields, the roads and the barns allowed crowds to gather and pilgrims to travel — in Rome as in Gaul, the great autumn feasts are also feasts of the harvest brought in. What is certain, on the other hand, is that it is not a Christianised pagan feast: no early medieval text links 1 November to a Celtic festival, and the question is treated on its own further on^[32].

Not to be confused: 1 and 2 November

On 1 November, the Church celebrates in joy all those who are already in glory; on 2 November, she prays for all the faithful departed, those who have died and whom God alone judges^[33]. The first day is a solemnity, with Gloria and white; the second is a graver commemoration, in which the priest traditionally wears violet and each priest may celebrate three Masses for the dead^[34]. The conviction that the living must pray for the dead goes back to the earliest times of Christianity; the idea of a special day of prayer in the wake of All Saints' Day predates the year 1000, and it was Saint Odilo, abbot of Cluny, who extended it in 998 to all the monasteries of his order — hence the date of 2 November throughout the Church^[35].

In French practice, the two days overlap: it is on the 1st, a public holiday, that families go to the cemetery to lay flowers on the graves^[36]. But the distinction matters: going to the cemetery on 1 November means visiting one's dead in the light of the feast of the saints, professing that death does not have the last word^[37]. On 2 November, a working day, the Masses for the departed welcome those who can free themselves: priests, religious and faithful together carry the mourning of the Church towards hope^[38].

Prayer for the souls in purgatory, the saints and the souls in purgatory and the meaning of intercession belong to their own articles: why pray for the dead, purgatory.

The Feast in a Few Dates

This timeline shows that All Saints was not born of a single decree but of a slow maturation, from Rome to the British Isles and then to the Frankish Empire. Each stage adds a stone: a place, a date, a prayer. And the second half of the story is read in the details: why the Roman spring gave way to the Frankish autumn, how the Middle Ages dressed the feast, and what the modern reforms kept of it.

The Martyrs of the East, First Multitude of the Saints

Before Rome, there were Antioch and the whole Christian East. Where persecutions had made multitudes of martyrs, the Churches took the habit of honouring them together, in a common memory, for want of being able to give each one his anniversary. An ancient homily, handed down under the name of Saint John Chrysostom, is preached "for all the holy martyrs of the whole world": the title alone already contains the whole of All Saints^[52]. It is this collective memory of the martyrs that the Second Vatican Council describes as the cradle of the cult of the saints: first the Apostles and those who shed their blood, then all those whose shining life commended them "to the pious devotion and imitation of the faithful"^[53].

The East kept this logic: its feast of All Saints is not an autumn date but the Sunday following Pentecost, as will be seen. The West, for its part, would give the same multitude another date — and it is this Roman, then Frankish, history that the stones and parchments recount.

Rome, 13 May: The Pantheon Becomes Saint Mary of the Martyrs

The first Roman feast of "all saints" was born of a spectacular gesture. At the beginning of the 7th century, Pope Saint Boniface IV (608-615) obtains from the Byzantine emperor Phocas the Pantheon, the temple raised to all the gods of Rome, and turns it into a church. The Liber pontificalis, the official chronicle of the popes, says it in one sentence: Boniface "asked Prince Phocas for the temple called the Pantheon, in which he made a church of the blessed Mary ever virgin and of all the martyrs; the emperor offered many gifts to this church"^[54]. For the editor of the text, Msgr Louis Duchesne, this is "the first known example of a Roman temple turned into a church"^[55].

A century later, Bede the Venerable gives the meaning of the gesture in his Chronicle:

"Where once was celebrated the worship, not of all the gods, but of all the demons, would henceforth be made the memory of all the saints." — Bede the Venerable, Chronica maiora, § 536^[56]

Bede takes up the same idea in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People: Boniface made the Pantheon a church "of the holy Mother of God and of all the martyrs of Christ, so that, the multitude of demons being excluded from it, the multitude of the saints might have its memory there"^[57]. Neither Bede nor the Liber pontificalis gives the day of the dedication, nor even its year: all that is known is that it took place at the beginning of the pontificate, in 609 according to the traditional chronology — the 19th-century Petits Bollandistes wrote "around the year 607" with the tables of their time^[58]. The 13 May comes from the martyrologies, the calendars of saints' feasts: the little Roman martyrology and that of Ado of Vienne inscribe on 13 May "the day of the dedication of Saint Mary of the Martyrs, established by Pope Boniface"^[59].

Rome therefore first celebrated "all saints" in spring, around the Virgin Mary and the martyrs whose bones — according to Baronius — were said to have been brought from the catacombs in twenty-eight cartloads and laid beneath the altar of the Pantheon^[60]. Cult of relics, patronage of Mary, multitude of martyrs: all the ingredients of the future All Saints are already there, except the autumn date.

Gregory III and the Oratory of "All the Righteous"

The second Roman milestone is the work of Pope Saint Gregory III (731-741). The Liber pontificalis recounts that he had built, inside the basilica of Saint Peter, near the main arch, on the men's side, an oratory where he laid "in honour of the Saviour and of his holy Mother, the relics of the holy apostles and of all the holy martyrs and confessors, of the perfect righteous who rest throughout the world"^[61]. For the first time, it is no longer only the multitude of martyrs honoured together, but all the righteous, of the whole earth.

The pope also organises the prayer of this place. The monks of three neighbouring monasteries sing there each day the vigils of the saints, and the priests of the week celebrate their Masses there. In the Eucharistic prayer of this oratory, Gregory III has a sentence added which he has engraved on marble tables:

"…whose solemnity is celebrated today in the presence of your majesty, Lord our God, throughout the world." — Gregory III, formula inserted into the canon of the Mass in the oratory of Saint Peter, Liber pontificalis^[62]

This regulation was adopted in synod, by the assembly of priests gathered before the tomb of Saint Peter, and its marble tables were still visible in the 15th century, before being broken^[63]. The Liber pontificalis does not date the dedication of the oratory — and one must be careful not to assert that it took place on a 1 November. But one clue is striking: the great synod of Gregory III against the destroyers of images had been convened for 1 November 731, according to the letter of convocation sent to the bishop of Grado^[64]. In the 8th century, 1 November already counts in Rome: it is the day on which the bishops are gathered to defend the holy images.

The Calends of November: Alcuin's Testimony

It is outside Rome that the date of 1 November first appears clearly. At the beginning of the year 800, the scholar Alcuin — trained then master at the school of York cathedral, a simple deacon, drawn to his court by Charlemagne, met at Parma in 781, and made abbot of Saint Martin of Tours in 796^[65] — writes to his friend Arn, archbishop of Salzburg:

"On the calends of November, the solemnity of all saints. Behold, venerable father Arn, you have the solemnity of all saints fixed, as we have said. Keep it ever in memory and never cease to celebrate it each year in its season." — Alcuin, letter 193 to Arn of Salzburg, around March 800^[66]

The rest of the letter says why this feast is so dear to him: if the prophet Elijah, a single righteous man, could by his prayer shut and open heaven, "how much more all the saints" of the New Testament, to whom have been entrusted the keys of the Kingdom, can open it to believers. Alcuin finally asks that the feast be prepared by three days of fasting, prayer, Masses and alms "for one another"^[67]. The All Saints of 1 November was thus born as an autumn feast of the North — Northumbria, Bavaria, the Frankish world — with its preparatory vigil, well before becoming the feast of Rome.

835: Louis the Pious and Gregory IV Fix the Date

The decisive step is imperial. Louis the Pious (814-840), son and successor of Charlemagne, "with the agreement of all the bishops of his kingdom and of his empire", decides that the feast of all saints shall be celebrated solemnly on 1 November, each year, in perpetuity — "on the advice of Pope Gregory, of holy memory", that is Gregory IV (827-844)^[68]. This is the testimony of the martyrology of Ado of Vienne, composed around 855-860, which gives no year but names the two actors: Emperor Louis and Pope Gregory^[69]. The traditional chronology places the ordinance in 835 — the later Roman martyrology reports it under the year 837^[70]. A gap of one or two years changes nothing essential: by the middle of the 9th century, the whole Frankish West already celebrates all saints on the calends of November, and Rome itself ends up adopting the Frankish date, abandoning 13 May.

Ado adds a detail revealing of medieval memory: he traces the Roman celebration of 1 November back to the Pantheon itself, as if Boniface IV had already fixed the calends of November^[71]. History is telescoped — the Pantheon was 13 May — but it says what the Middle Ages believed: a single feast, from Boniface to Louis the Pious, from Rome to the Empire.

The Middle Ages Dress the Feast: Vigil, Octave, Golden Legend

Between the 9th and 15th centuries, All Saints becomes one of the greatest feasts of the Christian year, with all the apparatus of solemnities: a vigil on 31 October, a day of fasting and preparation — it is this liturgical vigil that explains why the evening of 31 October bears a name, All Hallows' Eve^[72] — and, from Sixtus IV in 1480, an octave prolonging the feast for eight days^[73]. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, around 1260, recounts the feast to all Christendom and hands down the four reasons for its institution: honouring together the saints who have no feast of their own, gathering all the faithful in one joy, making up for the negligences of the year, and showing to all "the priceless happiness of the saints" to give them the desire for it^[74].

It is also in the Middle Ages that 1 November enters the life of peoples: at the end of the 10th century, the 2 November of the departed comes to attach itself to All Saints under the impetus of Saint Odilo of Cluny^[75], and the autumn customs — visits to tombs, prayers, alms, soul cakes — graft themselves onto the two days^[76].

From the Tridentine Reforms to the Current Calendar

The Council of Trent does not touch the date, but it unifies prayer: the missal and breviary of Saint Pius V (1568-1570) give the whole Latin Church the same All Saints Mass, opened by the antiphon Gaudeamus omnes in Domino — "Let us all rejoice in the Lord, for we celebrate the feast in honour of all the saints"^[77][78]. The feast thus passes through the centuries without major change until the reforms of the 20th century: Pius XII, in 1955, removes the fasted vigil and the octave as part of the simplification of the rubrics^[79]; Saint Paul VI, in 1969, promulgates the revised calendar in which All Saints figures as a solemnity with its own readings^[80]. Neither the date nor the meaning moved: only the liturgical adornment grew lighter.

First vespers, starting on the evening of the 31st

The solemnity begins the evening before, like every Sunday and every great feast: on October 31, the Church sings the first vespers of All Saints. The hymn, "Blessed is he who keeps his hands empty," paraphrases the Beatitudes in eight stanzas — the poor, the meek, those who mourn, those who hunger for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted — before the psalms unfold "the light of the Lord" promised to the saints^[81]. The evening Mass on October 31 is already the Mass of the feast: it is the one many families choose, before the cemetery day^[82].

It is from this vigil that the name Halloween comes, All Hallows' Eve: the evening that opens the feast of all the saints^[83]. Until 1955, that evening was a fasting vigil, a day of penitential preparation like the eves of the great feasts^[84]. The macabre costumes of modern folklore have nothing to do with this vigil: they come from secular autumn customs, not from the liturgy.

The Mass: four readings that never change

The All Saints' Day Mass is one of the rare Masses whose readings are fixed, identical every year regardless of the A, B or C cycle. The Church considers that on that day, it is the texts that define the feast^[85]:

The entrance antiphon sets the tone of joy: Gaudeamus omnes in Domino, diem festum celebrantes sub honore Sanctorum omnium — "Let us all rejoice in the Lord, for we celebrate this feast day in honor of all the saints"^[90]. It is with this exhortation, Benedict XVI noted, that the celebration opens: "the liturgy invites us to share in the heavenly exultation of the saints, to taste their joy"^[91]. The preface proclaims that God is glorified "in the assembly of all the saints" and that they are for us "friends and models of life"^[92].

These four readings form a whole. Revelation shows the end — the glorified multitude; the psalm shows the path — the pure heart; the epistle shows the secret — filial adoption; the Gospel shows the road — the Beatitudes. It is the same mystery seen from four sides, and that is why the Church never changes them. The rest of the day's liturgy unfolds this mystery hour by hour, from the Office of Readings to the evening vespers.

The Liturgy of the Hours: Saint Bernard at the heart of the night

At the Office of Readings, the second reading is the homily of Saint Bernard for All Saints' Day, the most famous sermon ever preached for this feast: "Why should our praise of the saints, why should our song to their glory, why should this very feast we celebrate? […] The saints have no need of our honors […] if we venerate their memory, it matters for us, not for them"^[93]. There Bernard distinguishes the twofold desire the feast must kindle: to desire the company of the saints — to be joined "to the assembly of the patriarchs, to the company of the prophets, to the group of the Apostles, to the immense multitude of the martyrs" — and to desire their happiness, even to the point of wanting to share their glory^[94]. Benedict XVI took up this sermon on November 1, 2006: "Such, then, is the meaning of today's solemnity: looking at the shining example of the saints, to reawaken in us the great desire to be like the saints"^[95].

The Catechism echoes the same logic when it defines the authentic veneration of the saints: not "multiplying external acts," but "dwelling with the saints to imitate them, uniting ourselves with them to share their lot, obtaining the help of their intercession"^[96]. And the Council notes that the phrase "crown of all the saints," applied to Christ, itself comes from the invitatory of the All Saints' Day office: the liturgy of the feast feeds even the Council's vocabulary^[97].

The Canon, the litanies and the old rite

The name of the saints is spoken at every Mass: the Roman Canon lists Mary, the Apostles and the martyrs, and the third Eucharistic Prayer asks to share "the inheritance with your elect, with the Virgin Mary, the Apostles and all the saints." But on November 1, this mention takes on a particular prominence: the proper preface sings of God "glorified in his saints," and the Litany of the Saints — the long invocation sung at baptisms, ordinations and vigils — fully displays that day its whole reason for being^[98].

In the ancient form of the Roman rite, the Gaudeamus Mass kept the readings of old — Revelation and the Beatitudes, already — formerly preceded by a fasted vigil on October 31 and followed by an octave until November 8^[99]. The 1955 reform of the rubrics abolished that vigil and that octave: the 1962 missal, which follows those rubrics, therefore celebrates All Saints' Day with no octave and no vigil fast, but with the same Gaudeamus Mass and the same readings^[100][101].

The indulgences of November 1–8

Eight days a year, the Church attaches a plenary indulgence to visiting a cemetery: from November 1 to 8, the faithful who visit a cemetery and pray there, even mentally, for the departed, may obtain for a soul in purgatory the remission of all the punishment due for its sins^[102]. On November 2, the same indulgence is attached to visiting a church or oratory with an Our Father and a Creed^[103]. This is the concrete expression of what the Catechism teaches: "our prayer for them is capable not only of helping them but also of making their intercession for us effective"^[104]. The usual conditions apply — confession, Communion, prayer for the intentions of the Supreme Pontiff, and detachment from all sin — and the Church asks that the visit be a true act of piety, not a stroll^[105].

In practice, the octave of prayer following All Saints' Day replaces in a sense the liturgical octave abolished in 1955: eight days to visit, lay flowers, pray — and offer each day's indulgence for a departed soul^[106][107]. Many families make a habit of returning to the cemetery during the week, once the crowds of the 1st have dispersed: prayer goes on when the chrysanthemums fade.

The Sunday after Pentecost

The Eastern Churches do not celebrate all the saints on November 1, but on the Sunday following Pentecost, the first Sunday after the descent of the Holy Spirit^[108]. The choice is theological: at Pentecost, the Spirit descends upon the Church; the following Sunday, the Church shows the fruit of that descent — the saints. "The Spirit has come down, here is what he has done": thousands of men, women and children, of all times and all places, made saints^[109]. The office of that Sunday closes the Pentecostarion, the liturgical book running from Easter to the feast of All Saints^[110].

The Eastern definition of the feast is the broadest there is: "all the Saints, all the Righteous, the Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, Confessors, Shepherds, Doctors and Monks, men and women, known and unknown, who have been added to the choirs of the saints from Adam to the end of the world"^[111]. There we recognize the "great multitude that no one could count" of Revelation, also read in the West on November 1^[112].

From all martyrs to all saints: the decree of Leo VI

Originally, the Eastern feast honored above all all the martyrs. It was the emperor Leo VI the Wise (886–912) who extended it to all the saints. His wife Theophano, who died in 893 or 894 after a life of great piety, was regarded by many as a saint; Leo had a church built to honor her there, but she forbade him — and the emperor then decided that the Sunday after Pentecost would be dedicated to All Saints, knowing that his wife would be honored there with all the righteous^[113]. The story, handed down by Byzantine tradition, says the essential: the Eastern feast is the feast of the saints known and unknown together, without list and without exception.

The icon of the feast shows this multitude: around Christ in glory are ordered the choirs of the Prophets, the Apostles, the martyrs, the bishops, the monks and the righteous, with Mary in the place of honor. Byzantine icons and their theology have their own article; here, the icon of All Saints is the Eastern All Saints' Day in image.

The saints of each land: the Russian example

Each Eastern Church also honors its own saints on a nearby date. The Russian Church celebrates, on the second Sunday after Pentecost — just after the Sunday of All Saints — the "synaxis of all the saints who have shone forth in the land of Russia": martyred princes, monks, bishops and, since the 20th century, the new martyrs of the persecutions^[114]. This feast, whose history runs from the 16th century to 1918 and then to its modern restoration, shows how the memory of all the saints takes root in each land without ceasing to be universal^[115].

Between East and West, then, there is neither contradiction nor rivalry, but two views of the same multitude. The East shows the saints as the fruit of the Spirit at Pentecost; the West shows them as the harvest of the year in autumn. And both traditions agree on the essential, as formulated by the Council for all: in the lives of the saints, "God manifests to men in a vivid light his presence and his face," and they form around us "a cloud of witnesses"^[116].

In practice, a Latin Catholic traveling in an Orthodox country in spring can live the feast of the saints with his Eastern brethren — and an Orthodox Christian in our lands is at home at the autumn All Saints' Day: two dates, one same multitude, one same joy.

A holy day of obligation and a public holiday

In France, All Saints' Day is one of the four Catholic feasts that have remained both of obligation and public holidays since the indult of 1802: Christmas, the Ascension, the Assumption and All Saints' Day^[117][118]. Before the Revolution, dozens of feasts were days of rest; Cardinal-Legate Caprara kept only these four, and France has never abandoned them. That is why November 1 still brings the country to a halt: schools closed, offices shut, families reunited — and cemeteries full.

The All Saints' school holidays, set each year by the Ministry of National Education, make the feast the heart of the first school break: two weeks of autumn that still bear the name of the solemnity, even for schoolchildren who no longer know its meaning^[119]. The Church sees a sign in this: the feast of the saints still sets the rhythm of the country's life, right down to school calendars.

The day of cemeteries

The French gesture of All Saints' Day is the visit to the cemetery. People clean the grave, lay flowers on it, pray there, gather there as a family — and parishes organize prayers, blessings of graves and sometimes Mass^[120]. A CRÉDOC survey for the funeral-arts trade association measured the scale of the occasion: in 2005, 51% of French people over 40 went to the cemetery on All Saints' Day as a matter of course — 62% of practicing Catholics, but also 47% of non-practicing believers and 37% of non-believers; once there, 81% paused in recollection and 81% laid flowers on the grave^[121]. The Catholic Church in France puts it simply: in the light of All Saints' Day, laying flowers on graves means "affirming and living hope in the eternal life given by the resurrection of Christ"^[122].

Theologically, the gesture is right provided it is placed correctly: on November 1, we visit our dead because it is the feast of the saints, professing that they too are called to glory; on November 2, we pray for them^[123][124]. Benedict XVI invited us not to fear this rendezvous: "may the traditional pause during these days at the graves of our departed be an opportunity to think without fear about the mystery of death"^[125].

Why chrysanthemums?

The flower of French All Saints' Day is the chrysanthemum — to the point that it is called the "flower of the dead." The custom is older than people say: the 19th-century press already attests to it. In 1895, Le Gaulois noted that "the poor people who every year, at All Saints' Day, are in the habit of laying chrysanthemums on the graves of their loved ones" would have to give it up because of the price of flowers^[126]; in 1893, in Marseille, people were already carrying "chrysanthemum wreaths onto the graves of deceased relatives"^[127]; and as early as 1891, a newspaper in the Aube spoke of "All Saints' chrysanthemums" as a matter of course^[128].

Two reasons explain the choice: the chrysanthemum blooms late, in October–November, when the other flowers are gone; and it lasts a long time in a pot on a grave, in the autumn rain^[129]. The legend attributing the custom to Raymond Poincaré laying flowers on war memorials in 1919 confuses two stories: 1919 sealed the chrysanthemum as the flower of November 11 and of war widows, but family graves had already been receiving them for at least thirty years^[130][131]. Today, millions of French households buy plants for All Saints' Day, and the chrysanthemum alone accounts for more than half of them^[132].

Halloween, Holywins and the lost vigil

Every October 31, commercial France celebrates Halloween: pumpkins, costumes, candy. Imported from the United States — where Irish emigrants had brought it in the late 19th century — it arrived in France in the 1990s "essentially for commercial reasons"^[133]. Its very name betrays its Christian origin: Halloween comes from All Hallows' Eve, the eve of All Saints' Day^[134]. But for the rest, the two feasts are "totally contradictory": Halloween is "a feast of fear," All Saints' Day "a feast of communion"^[135].

In response to Halloween, Catholics invented Holywins — a play on holy and Halloween: "holiness wins." The initiative was born in Paris in 2002, to celebrate the eve of All Saints' Day in Christian fashion on the evening of October 31: prayer vigils, children dressed as saints, torchlight processions^[136]. It has since spread to Poland, Belgium, Italy, Spain and beyond^[137]. The idea is simple: rather than endure the feast of fear, restore splendor to the vigil of the saints — the one the liturgy knew until 1955 and that families can relive: anticipated Mass, prayer, joy^[138][139].

One widespread error must finally be corrected, found even on Catholic websites: Halloween does not come from a feast "in honor of the deity Samain, god of death" — no Celtic deity named Samain is attested anywhere^[140]. Samhain is in Old Irish the name of the month of November and of the seasonal turning point that opens winter; historians show that Halloween customs — going door to door, soul cakes, prayers for the dead — are for the most part medieval Christian customs, the souling and soul cakes of England, not Druidic survivals^[141]. All Saints' Day therefore has nothing to do with Samhain: neither the date of November 1, set by the Frankish Church in the 9th century, nor the feast itself owes anything to the Celtic calendar.

Poland: the night of lights

In Poland, All Saints' Day (Wszystkich Świętych) is the most visibly kept feast in Europe: on November 1, millions of Poles flood the cemeteries, and at nightfall these are lit up with thousands of znicze, those red-and-white glass funeral lanterns^[142]. Seen from above, a Polish cemetery on All Saints' evening is a sea of flames: each grave bears its light, as each saint bears his. The next day, November 2 (Dzień Zaduszny, "Souls' Day"), prayers for the departed take over^[143]. Poland shows what All Saints' Day can be when a whole people still lives it: a tide of light on the threshold of winter.

Mexico: the feast of the dead listed by UNESCO

In Mexico, November 1 and 2 are the Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead: domestic altars (ofrendas) laden with orange cempasúchil flowers, candles, portraits and the favorite dishes of the departed; cemeteries watched over all night in prayer and celebration; sugar skulls and pan de muerto^[144]. The indigenous festivities dedicated to the dead were proclaimed by UNESCO a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2008^[145]. November 1 is traditionally dedicated to deceased children (angelitos), November 2 to adults^[146].

The Mexican blend — Catholic remembrance of the saints and the departed, pre-Columbian colors and symbols — sometimes puzzles Europeans. The Church recognizes its Catholic core there: praying, remembering, professing the resurrection; it only asks that the feast remain a prayer and not become a godless folklore^[147]. It is the same demand as in France regarding Halloween: whatever helps prayer is good, whatever frightens or mocks death is not^[148].

The Philippines, Guatemala and the other Americas

In the Philippines, All Saints' Day (Undás, from the Spanish honras) is one of the biggest popular gatherings of the year: families literally camp in the cemeteries from October 31 to November 2, praying, eating and keeping vigil together over the illuminated graves^[149]. In Guatemala, November 1 is the day of the giant kites of Sumpango: paper discs several meters across, carried by dozens of men, rise above the cemetery to "join the living and the dead" in prayer^[150]. In 2024, UNESCO inscribed the making technique of these giant kites on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity^[151]. Throughout Latin America, Spain brought the same structure — the Mass of All Saints on the 1st, prayers for the departed on the 2nd — dressed by each people in its own colors: in Spain itself, the huesos de santo ("saint's bones" pastries) and the buñuelos; in Portugal, the Pão-por-Deus, the "bread for God" begged by children from door to door^[152].

Italy, Spain, Germanic countries, the English-speaking world

In Italy, Ognissanti is a public holiday: Mass, cemeteries, and the fave dei morti, "beans of the dead" biscuits; in Spain, the Catalan Castañada blends chestnuts, sweet wine and prayer^[153]. In the Germanic countries, Allerheiligen keeps its soul breads — blessed Seelenbrot and braided Allerheiligenstriezel shared for the departed^[154]. In the English-speaking world, the eve has covered everything: Halloween, pumpkins and trick or treat — whose ancestor is nonetheless the medieval souling, those rounds in which "soul cakes" were offered in exchange for prayers for the dead^[155][156]. Everywhere the same pattern: a Catholic feast of the saints and the dead, dressed by each culture. On the Reformed side, the feast survives where the Reformation kept the calendar: the Church of England has made it a Principal Feast, celebrated on 1 November or on the Sunday falling between 30 October and 5 November^[157].

Two November 1sts that made history

Some years, November 1 entered history through the front door. On November 1, 1755, on All Saints' morning, a dreadful earthquake destroyed Lisbon: the churches, full for the feast, collapsed on the faithful, followed by the tsunami and the fire — several tens of thousands dead, and a philosophical shock that swept through the whole Europe of the Enlightenment^[158]. And on October 31, 1517, the eve of All Saints' Day, an Augustinian monk posted his 95 theses on indulgences on the door of the Wittenberg castle church: Martin Luther had chosen the eve of the greatest autumn feast, the day of the solemn exposition of the relics, to be read throughout Saxony^[159]. All Saints' Day, feast of the one and holy Church, thus saw born on its eve the greatest division of Western Christendom.

And history goes on: on November 1, 2025, on the solemnity of All Saints' Day, Pope Leo XIV proclaimed Saint John Henry Newman a Doctor of the Church, during the Mass of the Jubilee of the educational world — "a great joy," he said, to inscribe on this day of all the saints the one he held up as a model to educators^[160].

From Luther to Newman, All Saints' Day remains the day on which the Church rereads its history: division one evening in 1517, mourning one morning in 1755, joy one morning in 2025 — and always the same multitude of saints above the tumults of men.

The mystery in one sentence

All Saints celebrates this: men and women like us have reached Heaven, and their happiness has already begun. "See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. And so we are!"^[161]. Benedict XVI, on 1 November 2005, told families: the feast "lets us taste the joy of belonging to the great family of the friends of God," and "becoming saints means fully realizing what we already are," raised in Jesus Christ to the dignity of adopted sons of God^[162]. Baptism made us saints in seed; All Saints shows the harvest.

The Catechism calls heaven "the ultimate end and fulfillment of the deepest human longings, the state of supreme, definitive happiness"^[163] — and it adds that this happiness is not a solitude: heaven is "the blessed community of all who are perfectly incorporated" into Christ^[164]. All Saints is that community celebrating, shown to those still on the way.

The immense multitude and the anonymous saints

"Behold, a great multitude, which no man could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and tongues"^[165]. The Church knows the name of only a tiny fraction of her saints: the canonized, the martyrs of the calendars, the patrons of parishes. All the others are celebrated on this day:

"In this multitude, there are not only the officially recognized saints, but the baptized of every age and nation, who strove to accomplish the divine will with love and fidelity. We do not know the face nor even the name of most of them, but with the eyes of faith we see them shining, like stars filled with glory, in the firmament of God." — Benedict XVI, All Saints homily, 2006^[166]

That is the primary meaning of All Saints: no saint is missing from the feast, even without a name or a statue.

The Second Vatican Council describes this multitude as a single family in three states: "some of his disciples continue their pilgrimage on earth; others, having finished their life, are still being purified; others again are in glory," and "all, however, in varying degrees and in different ways, share in the same charity"^[167]. All Saints honors the third group — those in glory — without forgetting the other two: on this day we also pray for the living and for the dead, in the "exchange of spiritual goods" that strengthens the union of each with the others^[168]. The communion of saints has its own article; the feast is its yearly celebration.

The universal call: holiness for all

All Saints would be a discouraging feast if holiness were reserved for an elite. The Church teaches the opposite: "the call to the fullness of the Christian life and to the perfection of charity is addressed to all those who believe in Christ, whatever their state or form of life"^[169]. "All the faithful of Christ are therefore invited and obliged to seek and attain the holiness and perfection proper to their state"^[170]. The Catechism repeats: "All are called to holiness: 'Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect'"^[171].

Pope Francis gave this call its most famous image, that of the "saints next door":

"The saints are not unreachable or distant heroes, but they are people like us, they are our friends, whose starting point is the same gift that we have received: Baptism. […] they are those whom I like to call 'the saints next door,' who live normally among us." — Pope Francis, All Saints Angelus^[172] And he summed up the feast in two words: holiness is a gift — received at baptism, which "can completely change our life" — and a path — "to be walked together, helping one another, united with those excellent companions who are the saints"^[173]. Benedict XVI said the same thing differently: to be a saint, "there is no need to perform extraordinary actions and works, nor to possess exceptional charisms"; one must "listen to Jesus, and follow him without being discouraged by difficulties"^[174].

A feast of hope

All Saints falls at the onset of winter, when the days shorten and nature seems to die. The Church sees in this an inverted sign: it is at the very moment when everything speaks of death that she proclaims life. Saint John Paul II, from his first All Saints in 1978, said it: these days "place before the eyes of our soul inevitable death" and "at the same time give witness to life" — man, "condemned to death" by nature, "lives at the same time in expectation of the future life, and is called to glory"^[175]. The feast "tells us precisely how abundant the harvest is — not the harvest of death, but of salvation"^[176].

That is why All Saints is a joyful feast, despite the cemeteries: the opening antiphon commands rejoicing, the bells ring out in full peal, and the liturgy "invites us to share in the heavenly exultation of the saints, to taste their joy"^[177][178]. Sadness is not absent — on this day we also weep for those who are missing — but it is shot through with light: "the only true cause of sadness and unhappiness for the human being is to live far from Him"^[179].

Holiness in the Divine Will

All Saints honors every holiness, of every age — and Luisa reports that Jesus announces, for the times to come, a new and greater holiness: the Church has defined nothing on this point. Luisa Piccarreta reports this word of Jesus, received on 27 February 1929: "My daughter, the whole of Creation, all the Saints, are nothing but the effects of my Divine Will"^[180]. Every holiness — past, present and future — has the divine Will as its "first cause," which formed "every kind of holiness that exists"^[181].

And this Will calls to an even higher holiness: no longer only doing the will of God — as all the saints did — but living in it, possessing it "with all its effects" as one possesses life itself^[182]. The older forms of holiness are like mountains, trees, flowers and stars; "as for holiness in my Will, it is symbolized by the sun," which "benefits all, reaches everyone with its light and discriminates against none," working "silently, in an almost unnoticed way"^[183]. That holiness "is not an individual holiness, dedicated to doing good in a certain place, to a certain people and in a certain age": it must "do good to all people in all places and in all ages"^[184]. The new and divine holiness has its own article; All Saints, which celebrates all the saints, is like its jewel case: the feast of what was and the announcement of what is to come.

Saint Bernard: desire

The sermon of Saint Bernard for All Saints, read each year at the Office of Readings, is the most famous text of the feast^[185]. In it Bernard turns the question around: what is the point of celebrating the saints?

"Why our praise of the saints, why our song to their glory, why this very feast that we celebrate? […] The saints have no need of our honors, and nothing in our worship can be of use to them. Indeed, if we venerate their memory, it matters for us, not for them. […] For my part, I confess, I feel that their memory kindles in me a burning desire." — Saint Bernard, homily for All Saints^[186]

Bernard unfolds this desire in two flames: desiring the company of the saints — "to be joined to the joy and communion of all the saints" — and desiring their help: "the aid and prayer of the saints, so that their intercession may obtain for us what remains beyond our own powers"^[187].

Saint Cyprian: the joy that awaits us

In the 3rd century, Saint Cyprian wrote to his brethren about the happiness of heaven, in a passage retained by the Catechism:

"What will be your glory and your happiness: to be admitted to see God, to have the honor of sharing the joy of salvation and eternal light with Christ the Lord your God […] to enjoy in the Kingdom of heaven, in the company of the just and the friends of God, the joys of immortality acquired." — Saint Cyprian, Letter 56, quoted by the Catechism^[188]

"The company of the just and the friends of God": that is exactly what All Saints celebrates — not a distant elite, but a company in which everyone is awaited.

Saint Thérèse: "I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth"

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who died in 1897 at the age of twenty-four, is the saint who best expressed what the saints do in Heaven: they go on loving. To her sisters, already grieving her departure, she promised:

"I want to spend my Heaven doing good on earth." — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Last Conversations^[189]

The Catechism takes up the same promise, with the testimony of the dying Saint Dominic — "Do not weep, I shall be more useful to you after my death and I shall help you more effectively than during my life" — to teach that the saints "do not cease to care for those whom they have left on earth" and that "their intercession is their highest service to God's plan"^[190][191]. All Saints is therefore not the feast of the dead whom we admire from afar: it is the feast of friends who are still at work.

Elizabeth of the Trinity: going to the Light

In 1906, the Carmelite Elizabeth of the Trinity died at the age of twenty-six, uttering the words that sum up the whole of All Saints:

"I am going to the Light, to Love, to Life." — Elizabeth of the Trinity, last words, 9 November 1906^[192]

Going to the Light, to Love, to Life: three names of God, three names of Heaven, three names of the feast of 1 November. The Catechism says it as a theologian: "To live in heaven is 'to be with Christ,'" where "where Christ is, there is life, there is the kingdom"^[193].

The Book of Heaven: the Will as keeper of all the saints

Luisa Piccarreta also received a vision of the assembly of the saints, no longer as a multitude to be admired, but as a treasure kept safe. On 8 October 1931, her spirit "turns around the Sun of the supreme Fiat" and she finds it there "surrounded by all the works, sacrifices, sufferings and heroisms accomplished by the saints of old and the new saints, those of the Queen of heaven and also those accomplished out of love": "The divine Will preserves all"^[194].

"My poor mind turns around the Sun of the supreme Fiat. I find It surrounded by all the works, sacrifices, sufferings and heroisms accomplished by the saints of old and the new saints. […] The divine Will preserves all." — Book of Heaven, 8 October 1931^[195]

Nothing is lost: neither hidden tears, nor unnoticed sacrifices, nor heroisms without witnesses. All Saints celebrates that too — that everything is kept, and that everything will be restored.

Does celebrating the saints overshadow Christ?

This is the most serious objection, and the oldest: by honoring the saints, do we not divert toward creatures the honor due to God alone? The Second Vatican Council answers it in advance: "every authentic testimony of love shown by us to those in heaven, by its very nature tends, as toward its end, to Christ, the 'crown of all the saints,' and through him to God, who is wonderful in his saints and glorified in them"^[196]. Honoring the saints is honoring Christ in them — as one admires an artist in his masterpiece.

The Council adds the golden rule of the cult of the saints: it "does not consist so much in the multiplying of exterior acts, but rather in a fervent and effective love," in seeking to imitate them and to obtain their intercession^[197]. And the liturgy itself sings it: "In the lives of our companions in humanity, more perfectly transformed into the image of Christ, God manifests to men in living light his presence and his face"^[198]. The saints do not hide God: they show him. Detailed answers to the objections on intercession, the Bible and intercession and the communion of saints are in their articles.

Why celebrate saints we do not know?

Because the Church is greater than her calendar. The canonized saints — a few thousand names — are only the visible part: "a great multitude, which no man could number" surrounds them^[199]. Refusing to celebrate the unknown would mean saying that only the famous count in the eyes of God. All Saints professes the opposite: the old woman who prayed all her life in her kitchen, the father who forgave in silence, the child who died too soon — all are part of the feast, even without name or statue^[200]. That is also the meaning of the calendar of saints: each day has its proper names, and 1 November has all the rest.

Is All Saints the feast of the dead?

No — and the confusion is unfortunate because it saddens a joyful feast. 1 November celebrates the saints in glory, in gladness, in white; 2 November prays for the departed, in recollection, in purple^[201]. In France, the public holiday means graves are visited on the 1st: this is legitimate, provided it is done "in the light of All Saints," professing hope in the resurrection^[202][203]. Prayer for the dead, purgatory and the November indulgences are explained here and in their article.

Can the saints in Heaven really help us?

Yes, and this is the dogma of the communion of saints: "the union of those still on the way with their brethren who have fallen asleep in the peace of Christ knows not the slightest interruption," and it "is strengthened by the exchange of spiritual goods"^[204]. The saints in Heaven, "present to the Lord, through him, with him and in him, do not cease to intercede for us with the Father"^[205]. Saint Thérèse promised it, Saint Bernard preached it, the Catechism teaches it: "We can and should ask them to intercede for us and for the whole world"^[206]. All Saints is the day when this friendship is put to the test: we speak to the saints, we thank them, we ask them — as Pope Francis advised: "do I feel the saints close to me, do I speak to them, do I turn to them?"^[207].

The feast and its liturgical family: The liturgical year · The calendar of saints · Ordinary Time · The Easter Vigil · Easter · Pentecost · Christmas · Epiphany · The Ascension · Holy Mary, Mother of God · The Presentation of the Lord · The Holy Trinity · The Sacred Heart · The Transfiguration · Corpus Christi · Ash Wednesday · Palm Sunday · Holy Thursday · Good Friday · Holy Saturday · The Baptism of the Lord · The Annunciation · The Assumption.

The doctrine the feast celebrates: The communion of saints · What is the communion of saints? · Why ask for the intercession of the saints? · Does the Bible teach the intercession of the saints? · The Beatitudes · Purgatory · The saints and the souls in purgatory · Why pray for the dead? · Saint Odilo of Cluny · The new and divine holiness.

The witnesses cited: Pope Saint Boniface IV · Pope Saint Gregory III · Saint Bernard of Clairvaux · Saint Thérèse of Lisieux · Saint John Henry Newman.

Principal sources for this article: Liber pontificalis (Duchesne ed., 1886); Bede the Venerable, Chronica maiora and Ecclesiastical History; Alcuin, letter 193 (MGH); Ado of Vienne, Martyrology (PL 123); Roman Missal and Liturgy of the Hours (AELF); Second Vatican Council, Lumen gentium and Sacrosanctum Concilium; Catechism of the Catholic Church; Benedict XVI, John Paul II, Francis and Leo XIV for All Saints' Day (vatican.va); Petits Bollandistes, vol. XIII (1876); Livre du Ciel by Luisa Piccarreta; UNESCO (giant kites, 2024); Church of England (Common Worship).