All Saints' Day 2026 Countdown

All Saints' Day on November 1 is a Christian feast honouring all the saints, followed the next day by All Souls' Day remembering the departed.

History

All Saints' Day honours the whole company of saints, known and unknown, in a single feast. A commemoration of all the martyrs was kept from the early centuries of the Church — in the East on the Sunday after Pentecost, where Orthodox churches still keep it. In Rome, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon to Mary and all the martyrs on 13 May in 609 or 610, and in the eighth century Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to all the saints in St Peter's on November 1; in the 830s Pope Gregory IV, with the backing of the emperor Louis the Pious, extended the November date to the whole Western Church. The evening before became All Hallows' Eve — the origin of the name Halloween — while November 2 developed as All Souls' Day, dedicated to prayer for all the faithful departed. Across Europe and Latin America the first days of November grew into an important season of remembrance. In many countries All Saints' Day is a public holiday, and families visit cemeteries to clean and decorate graves, lay flowers — especially chrysanthemums — and light candles. In Poland cemeteries glow after dark with millions of candle lanterns (znicze); in Portugal children go door to door on the morning of November 1 asking for pão-por-Deus, small cakes and sweets; in Guatemala the towns of Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez fly giant kites on November 1 as messages to the dead; and in the Philippines families camp at gravesides for Undas. Sweden and Finland observe the feast on the Saturday between October 31 and November 6. In Mexico, the Catholic feast days of November 1 and 2 coincide with the Día de Muertos, a distinct observance whose relationship to pre-Hispanic practice is itself a matter of scholarly debate, and the two are observed alongside one another over the same days.

Meaning

All Saints' Day celebrates lives of holiness and the enduring bonds of faith across generations. It holds up the saints as examples and companions, and expresses a belief in a community that reaches beyond death. Together with the days around it, the feast has become a tender season of memory. Tending graves, lighting candles and gathering as families turn the observance into a shared act of remembrance and love for those who have gone before.