What is All Saints' Day?

In this video we explore the holiday(s) known as "All Saints' Day" and "All Souls' Day", as well as their connection to Halloween. We then look at a particular example of how this day is celebrated in contemporary Sweden.

#AllSaintsDay #Halloween #Sweden

[fmac]

In Brazil, all souls day (“dia de finados” “day of the dead") is an official holiday and we do not work. Catholics, especially or older, use the date to visit or remember their deceased loved ones, but for most people it's a day to enjoy the break.

Halloween has been gaining ground mainly in schools, as an extension of English classes, but also as theme parties.

[winterthemuteson]

Kind of a minor correction, but in Catholic school we were taught that a saint with a lowercase s is anyone who has gone to heaven, while a Saint with a capital s is one of the people that the church has officially declared as having gone to heaven. Therefore, All Saints Day isn't just about the Saints and the martyrs, but the saints as a whole. All Souls Day is for people in both heaven and purgatory.

[b.griffin]

Please do a video on the history of Christian veneration of saints.

[angelarbab]

This was amazing, a friend of mine (Iranian) living in Stockholm sent me photos of the cemetery last night, it was beautiful. She lit a candle in memory of her mom passed in Iran…
I think your view of religion is so darn beautiful and I wish you interview Yuval Harari one day! He is my favorite author and h are my favorite YouTuber, I think it would be absolutely phenomenal and insightful for all of us.
Think about it please 🙏🏻

[sakuralily]

In the Philippines All Saints Day is like a reunion among relatives as they visit the graves of departed loved ones. As a kid I never liked it much since we usually spent the entire day in the cemetery which I found boring.
That also means All Souls Day technically isn't celebrated, since families usually go to the cemetery on All Saints Day.

[dstinnettmusic]

As a practicing Episcopalian, I can tell you that the liturgy is very death and resurrection focused in this time of year.

I love the church calendar for this reason, guiding the mind and heart towards reflection on these important topics.

[austejajurkynaite]

In Lithuania we officially have All Saints day on November 1st and All Souls day on November 2nd, but the latter is a pagan holiday with very old traditions on having feasts in cemeteries or leaving food offerings for spirits. Halloween is also becoming more popular, so we have all 3 days of either celebration or stillness and respect for the dead.

[yurineri]

here in brazil, we get a day off in all souls day and we actually only celebrate all saints day a few days later on the day of the following weekend mass, the official date of the all saints day is still right next to all souls day but in practice the church moves the day a bit later so people have more breathing room between morning for deceased loved ones and celebrating the saints

[boisterousjoy]

Your videos really tickle a part of my mind I can't exercise everywhere. Thank you so much

[redflags]

In the Philippines, we don't celebrate Halloween (generally. There is a recent trend of celebrating Halloween in the Western tradition, but this is more an effect of class and neo-colonial attitudes than anything), but we do celebrate All Saints and (to some extent) All Souls. More the former than the latter, to the point that All Souls is barely a holiday. We call the period "Undas".

It's more or less the same as how you described it in Sweden (All Saints' is more about remembering loved ones than remembering saints per se, etc.). Generally, families tend to visit their loved ones near November 1 to avoid the rush, but most do respect the tradition.

The real interesting part, though, is how November 1 relates to indigenous populations and indigenous burial practice. In the Cordillera, they celebrate Undas by making huge bonfires. Quite a sight. I don't know much else about how other IP's remember the dead, but I'm sure somebody else knows.

[davidcheater]

It's nice to hear you talk about practice in Sweden.
The phenomenon of Secular Christianity seems to have a lot in common with a lot of Jewish practice; disengagement from institutional religion but emphasis on home/family/community. I know many Jews who do not attend religious services but still practice Chanukkah and Passover.

[chris]

I never actually realized there was a difference between All Saints and All Souls day. I grew up in the Methodist church in the US and we celebrated "All Saints Day" in church on the first Sunday of November, but--as it was explained to me--since we're protestants we don't have formal saints, so we just commemorated everyone from the church or someone's family who'd died in the past year. I think there was also some wording about a saint being anyone who'd inspired you in your faith, so we'd meditate on who those people had been.

[arkofthecovenant]

This channel reminds me of my cultural anthropology class back in my college days. Keep doing good quality production🕯👍🏼🕯

[krakendragonslayer]

To make it full, you need to include custom of *Дзяды* ( *Dziady*, Grandfathers) celebrated in regions of Polesia, Podlachia, in nowadays eastern Lithuania and in land of Belarus including Smolensk - all those lands together are called "old Lithuania".

Basically the holiday is a feast in the midnight in cementeries (graves of grandfathers serve as tables), and magic mushrooms are sometimes considered as a part of tradition during it.

[varana]

What is missing from the picture, I think, is that Sweden has been an almost exclusively Protestant (more specifically: Lutheran) country since the 1500s. In Protestant Christianity, veneration (or even acknowledgment) of Saints is not a thing, so All Saints' Day lost basically its reason for existing. Some form of commemoration of the dead was still relevant, so a form of All Souls' Day endured, but the other two went out of favour until Halloween was reintroduced from abroad.

[Beepbeep_its_treasure]

I'm on holidays now in the Phillipines and it's nov 1. It's all saints day and I've never heard of it before!

[loretta]

My birthday is November 1st!! Always loved learning about these traditions!!

[pakistanitraveller]

Learnt so much from this channel. Love the videos ❤️

[DutchJoan]

Quite a healthy way of celebrating All Saints and All Souls. I can't remember which day it was, but Iranians have a day where they'll visit the cemetery too. I think it's a lovely custom.

[el_rey_gris]

Please do more on Catholicism and the Church fathers!!!