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All Saints' Day


n.

November 1, the day on which a Christian feast honoring all the saints is observed. Also called Allhallows.


 
 

In Christianity, a day commemorating all the saints of the church, known and unknown. It is celebrated on November 1 in the Western churches and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Eastern churches. The first general observance of All Saints' Day was ordered by Pope Gregory IV in 837. In medieval England the festival was called All Hallows, and its eve is still known as Halloween.

For more information on All Saints' Day, visit Britannica.com.

 
English Folklore: All Saints' Day

(1 November)

Germany and England began celebrating a feast of all martyrs and saints on 1 November in the 8th century, instead of on 13 May, as was done in Rome; eventually the rest of Western Christendom also adopted the November date. Although in itself a joyous festival, it was also the eve of All Souls' Day, so in medieval times it became customary to pray for the dead on this date. At dusk, torchlit processions and church vigils were held, and bells were rung till midnight. At the Reformation the custom was forbidden, but many people were defying the ban and ringing church bells as late as the 1580s. Later still, in the 18th and early 19th centuries, some villagers in Lancashire and Derbyshire would light small fires in the fields at midnight on All Saints' Day, to see in All Souls, and kneel round them to pray for their dead.

This date falls between Halloween and All Souls, so in those areas around Shropshire and Staffordshire where souling was prevalent, All Saints did not have a separate identity but was swamped by these other two festivals. In other areas, however, a range of customs took place on this day, though none of them seems to be widespread, or at least widely reported. At Goadby (Leicestershire) in the 18th century, a children's bonfire custom is recorded. In Derbyshire it was customary to strew flowers on the graves of departed loved ones. In Hampshire and the Isle of Wight special cakes were made and eaten. A 19th-century love divination is reported from Worcestershire as special to All Saints' Day: ‘A young woman took a ball of new worsted and holding it in her fingers, threw the ball through the open window at midnight, saying “Who holds?” It was assumed that her future husband would pick up the worsted, mention his name, and disappear’ (N&Q for Worcestershire (1856), 190).

See also HALLOWEEN, ALL SOULS' DAY, and SOULING.

Bibliography
The full bibliography list is available here.

  • Wright and Lones, 1940: iii. 121-37
 
Columbia Encyclopedia: All Saints' Day,
feast of the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and day on which churches glorify God for all God's saints, known and unknown. It is celebrated on Nov. 1 in the West, since Pope Gregory IV ordered its church-wide observance in 837. Its origin lies earlier in the common commemorations of martyrs who died in groups or whose names were unknown, which were held on various days in different parts of the Church; over time these celebrations came to include not only the martyrs but all saints. During the Reformation the Protestant churches understood “saints” in its New Testament usage as including all believers and reinterpreted the feast of All Saints as a celebration of the unity of the entire Church. In medieval England the festival was known as All Hallows, hence the name Halloween [=All Hallows' eve] for the preceding evening.


 
WordNet: All Saints' Day
Note: click on a word meaning below to see its connections and related words.

The noun has one meaning:

Meaning #1: a Christian feast day honoring all the saints; first observed in 835
  Synonyms: Allhallows, November 1, Hallowmas, Hallowmass


 
 

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Copyrights:

Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.  Read more
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved.  Read more
English Folklore. A Dictionary of English Folklore. Copyright © 2000, 2003 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.  Read more
Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/  Read more
WordNet. WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.  Read more

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