Holidays & Festivals
All Saints
Also Known As All Saints' Day The usual full form; the entry is stored as the bare "All Saints". · All Saints Day The usual full form, unpunctuated.
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The Christian feast honoring all the saints, known and unknown, who have attained the vision of God in heaven, celebrated in the Western church on November 1. It grew from early commemorations of the martyrs and was extended to embrace every holy soul, including the countless faithful whose names are not recorded in the calendar. The day expresses belief in the communion of saints, the bond uniting the Church on earth with those in heaven, and holds them up as examples and intercessors. It is often followed by All Souls' Day, on which the faithful pray for all the dead. All Saints celebrates holiness fulfilled and the fellowship of the whole people of God.
Facts
Reckoning
Calendar SystemGregorian (civil solar) 1 Fixed or MovableFixed date in its own calendar 1 Observance
Observance Type Observance TypeCommemoration of a person or event 1 Origins
Era of Composition Learn More
From the Martyrs to All the Holy Dead
All Saints is the Western feast, kept on 1 November, honouring every saint in heaven, the celebrated and the anonymous alike. It grew out of the early commemoration of martyrs: local churches kept the anniversaries of their own witnesses, and as the number outran the calendar a single collective feast emerged to embrace them all, later widened to include all the holy dead, not only those who died for the faith. A general feast of all martyrs is attested in the Christian East by the fourth century.
The Roman date has a documented origin. Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome as a church of Mary and the martyrs in the early seventh century, on 13 May; the shift to 1 November is associated with the eighth- and ninth-century Frankish church and its formal extension by Pope Gregory IV. Whether the November date was chosen to overlay the Celtic Samhain is argued both ways and cannot be settled from the sources; the May and November commemorations both predate any securely dated contact between them.
The Communion of Saints, and the Day After
The feast expresses the doctrine of the communion of saints: the conviction that the church on earth, the dead being purified, and the saints in glory form one body, able to pray for one another. On this reading the saints are held up both as examples and as intercessors, and the feast is one of confidence rather than mourning. In much of the Catholic world it is a holy day of obligation and a public holiday.
It is followed on 2 November by All Souls' Day, on which the faithful pray for all the dead, and the two days are often taken together as a single commemoration of the departed. The Reformation split the tradition here: many Protestant churches retained All Saints as a celebration of the whole people of God but rejected prayer for the dead and the invocation of saints, so that in Lutheran and Anglican use the day became, in part, a remembrance of all faithful Christians who have died. The popular customs of the eve, Halloween, are treated under their own entry.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Why this is disputed. Later medieval tradition ties the feasts origin to Boniface IVs dedication of the Pantheon on May 13, but historians of the Roman liturgy more often trace the specific November 1 date, and the feasts expansion from martyrs alone to all the saints collectively, to independent developments in Rome roughly a century later. The Pantheon dedication is well documented in its own right; its status as the origin of All Saints specifically is the part later tradition supplies rather than contemporary record.
All Saints commemorates the whole body of the recognised and unrecognised holy dead together, including those with no cause and no name.
Belongs to Tradition
Alla helgons dag, kept in Sweden on the Saturday falling between October 31 and November 6 rather than on November 1, and one of the most widely observed days in the Swedish year.
Continues Festival
All Saints' Day (1 November) shares the calendar turn of the Gaelic Samhain. Attested for the calendrical overlap. The Christian feast has its own origin (commemoration of all the martyrs/saints) and its move to 1 November is documented; the overlap with Samhain is a real but limited continuity, not evidence the Christian feast is merely Samhain renamed.
Found In
Observed In
All Saints is kept on 1 November in the Western church.
Timing Rules
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005All Saints; the Pantheon dedication and the November dateView the Source The Book of Common Prayer
Church of England; ed. Brian Cummings, Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2011View the Source Universal Norms on the Liturgical Year and the General Roman Calendar
Paul VI (motu proprio Mysterii Paschalis), Holy See, 1969
The Study of Anglicanism
Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.), SPCK / Fortress Press, 1998
Religious Celebrations: An Encyclopedia of Holidays, Festivals, Solemn Observances, and Spiritual Commemorations
J. Gordon Melton (editor), ABC-CLIO, 2011All Saints and the communion of saintsView the Source The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
The Oxford Companion to the Year: An Exploration of Calendar Customs and Time-Reckoning
Bonnie Blackburn and Leofranc Holford-Strevens, Oxford University Press, 1999View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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