All Souls Day

Celebrated much more in former days, on All Souls Day (the day following All Saints or All Hallows' Day), people pray for the souls of the dead, particularly those believed to be in Purgatory.

It is celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church which has set it aside for a service for the repose of the deceased. Roman Catholic doctrine holds that after death, human spirits might spend time in a punishing place called Purgatory ...

Before 998, All Souls’ was marked with celebrations from the festival of Woden (Odin) as god of the dead, "parading the Hodening wild horse and other guising including mummers’ plays enacting the mysteries of life, death and rebirth". (Pennick, Nigel, The Pagan Book of Days, Destiny Books, Rochester, Vermont, USA, 1992) Hodening is a custom which used to be found in Wales, and locally in Kent, Lancashire, and other English counties, at various dates during the Christmas and New Year seasons, and seems to be a survival of the hobby-horse tradition once common during the Christmas season in the British Isles ...

Categories: folklore, calendar-customs, religion, christianity, saint