Feast day · November 1
All Saints' Day
The day for everyone who never got a day.
The Church has named a few thousand saints. It is very clear that the actual number of holy people who have ever lived is enormously larger, and that almost none of them were written down.
November 1 is for them. Grandmothers who prayed for people who never knew it. Anyone who was quietly, unremarkably good for eighty years and then died and was forgotten in two generations.
It is the biggest feast on the calendar by headcount and nobody knows a single name on the list. That is rather the point. And the night before it, All Hallows' Eve, is where Halloween comes from.
All Saints' Day facts for kids
- A holy day of obligation in the United States
- Halloween is literally All Hallows' Eve, the night before
- November 2, the day after, is All Souls' Day, for everyone who has died
- It has been kept on November 1 since the 700s
Feast day: November 1 · Patron of a holy day of obligation
All you holy men and women whose names I'll never know, pray for me.