TOUSSAINT. Happy not to be working this Tuesday, November 1, 2022? But do you know why this day is a public holiday? What do we celebrate on All Saints Day? Christian holiday ? Halloween ? Everything you need to know about Toussaint and its origins.
[Mis à jour le 1er novembre 2022 à 10h42] Toussaint rhymes for many with saints, but for others it rather evokes the feast of the dead, visits to cemeteries, and flowers placed on graves. Finally, the meaning is quite different for some who see it above all, and above all… as a holiday during which they can laze around, spend some time with family or friends. Question: what is really the significance of this recurring event in the Catholic calendar? Originally, the feast of All Saints was set up by the Catholic Church with the objective of honoring all saints, whether known or not. Thus, for many practitioners, this day of November 1, 2022 will be marked by a mass. The fact remains that in the minds of many French people, All Saints Day is the day when we celebrate the dead.
How to explain this? After establishing the feast of All Saints, the Church very quickly considered that it was necessary to add a new day of celebration to it in order to pray for the deceased who had not yet entered the afterlife, as recalled by Le Figaro. It was therefore decided that this day of homage to all the deceased Christians would take place the day after All Saints Day, ie November 2. It was not until the 13th century that this second feast day entered definitively into the Roman liturgical calendar. A point of detail largely unknown in our contemporary societies, which it is nevertheless useful to recall.
All Saints Day is one of the 11 public holidays recognized in France and appears in the article L3133-11 of the Labor Code. Before the French Revolution, there were nearly 50 religious holidays in France, including All Saints Day. In order to reduce the influence of Catholicism and for the sake of economic efficiency, they will be abolished with the advent of the revolutionary calendar, which will come into force on October 6, 1793 (or 15 Vendémiaire of Year II of the Republic). In the villages, people lend themselves reluctantly to this new state of affairs and they continue to be unemployed on Saint John’s or All Saints’ Day. In 1802, Napoleon reinstated four religious holidays, one for each season: Christmas in winter, Ascension in spring,Assumption in summer and All Saints Day in autumn. Despite its anticlericalism, the Third Republic will not go back on this religious heritage. The crisis could, on the other hand, call into question the existence of certain religious holidays: in 2012, Portugal removed All Saints Day from its list of non-working days…
Know that the tradition of chrysanthemums is not necessarily what you think. Although All Saints’ Day was originally a religious festival (see below), the chrysanthemums come from a political will: that of celebrating, from 1919, the soldiers who fell for France during the First world War. That year, after the armistice of November 11th whose centenary will be celebrated in a few days, France is trying somehow to recover from the horror of the trenches. It was in this post-war context that Raymond Poincaré, then President of the Republic, asked the French to go and decorate the graves of soldiers who had died for their country with a chrysanthemum.
During All Saints’ Day, the flower will very quickly leave the strict commemorative framework and spread throughout France and Europe, as the main means of paying tribute to all the deceased. Until now, in fact, candles were placed on the graves during All Saints’ Day. But the chrysanthemum does not always have the same meaning abroad: in Japan, it is the symbol of the Emperor (we sometimes speak of the “chrysanthemum throne”). Because the chrysanthemum is native to the Far East (Korea, China, Japan). It would have been created by the hybridization of several wild species. It flowers naturally in autumn and resists frost well: it is therefore perfectly adapted to the autumnal climate of the beginning of November.
Originally, All Saints is a creation of the Catholic Church, which is never mentioned in the Bible. All Saints Day, feast of all saints, was created by Pope Boniface IV in 610 AD. The pontiff thus wanted to honor the memory of the martyrs among the first Christians. Indeed, converts to this monotheistic religion were massacred by the Romans at the beginning of our era. From the fourth century, Christians had paid posthumous homage to these early believers, exalting their courage and exchanging their relics.
The creation of a common feast allowed the Catholic hierarchy to bring together all these unofficial celebrations. Since then, on November 1, Catholics have celebrated All Saints’ Day. On this day, believers celebrate all the martyrs and saints of Christendom, known and unknown. The saints are remarkable people, given as an example for their actions. To become a saint, one must have performed miracles or particularly virtuous acts in the eyes of the Church, which can initiate a canonization procedure. As recalled at the beginning of this article, it is therefore not, in theory, on November 1st that we should go and flower the graves of our deceased loved ones. November 2 is indeed, in the liturgical calendar, the official day of homage to all the deceased Christians.
All Saints Day is celebrated every year in France on November 1st. This year 2022, the date falls on Tuesday. The date of All Saints has had a turbulent history. When Boniface IV decided to celebrate All Saints’ Day, it took place on May 13. It was indeed on that day that the Pope had consecrated the Pantheon, a Roman temple transformed into a burial place for Christian martyrs. The Pantheon celebrated all the gods, All Saints’ Day will celebrate all the saints. It was around 835 that Pope Gregory IV shifted the feast to November, 1st. This change in the liturgical calendar could have its origins in the dedication of a chapel in the Church of Saint Peter in Rome to all the saints by one of his predecessors.