“Tomorrow, surviving relatives will remember all saints and martyrs during Christian history, followed by All Souls Day to commemorate those who have passed within the faith”
At the entrance of one tombs-filled graveyard in northwest Philippines facing Luzon Bay, there is a spine-chilling signboard on its stone arch in bold “Dakami ita, dakayonto intono bigat.”
Loosely translated into the language of the Thomasites, who arrived in the Philippines in 1901 to establish a new public school system, the sign means “Our turn today, your turn tomorrow.”
Tomorrow, many in the north will visit their respective town cemeteries to mark All Saints Day, followed the next day by All Souls Day – both to remember members of the faith who have died, especially those believed to be suffering in purgatory.
Through prayers, masses, and alms giving, the living pay tribute to the dead and hope to help them enter into heaven.
Tomorrow, surviving relatives will remember all saints and martyrs during Christian history, followed by All Souls Day to celebrate those who have passed within the faith, in a commemoration called The Day of the Dead, or, in the language of the region, Piesta Dagiti Natay.
Observers of culture say this intriguing event seeks to celebrate the people who are no longer with us on this earthly plane and, according to tradition, will later accompany us from the spiritual stage.
The Christian concept of the importance of the individual soul underlies All Saints Day and All Souls Day, both observed worldwide primarily in the Catholic and Anglican traditions.
Today, there is the Halloween tradition, where ghosts, symbolic of human souls roaming the earth, play an important chapter, underlining the significance of the human soul and its existence beyond death.
This, according to culture buffs, is at the heart of centuries of cultural traditions behind Halloween, called by different names by the different regions of this predominantly Christian country of 114 million from Tawi Tawi in the far south to Batanes up north.
Everybody knows the secular holiday of Halloween. But not everybody knows it derives from a holy day, All Saints Day on Nov. 1, which is followed by All Souls day on Nov. 2.
The root word of Halloween — ‘’hallow’’ — means ‘’holy.’’ The suffix “een” is an abbreviation of “evening” and refers to the Eve of All Hallows, the night before the Christian holy day that honors saintly people of the past.
“All Saints is a celebration of the communion of saints, those people we believe are in heaven,” one theologian, the Rev. Richard Donohoe, pastor of Our Lady Queen of the Universe Catholic Church in Birmingham, once said.
All Souls Day is a day to pray for all souls.
Among Catholics, prayers are offered for those in purgatory, waiting to get into heaven.
On All Souls Day, Catholic churches have a Book of the Dead, in which parishioners have an opportunity to write the names of relatives to be remembered.
The ‘’Dia de los Muertos,’’ or ‘’day of the dead,’’ in Latin countries keeps alive some of the tradition of honoring souls of the dead.
“All Hallows was considered a time when evil could manifest itself,” Donohoe said.
“We do believe in the visible and the invisible. There is good and there is evil. There is invisible evil and invisible good. It’s an acknowledgment of that existence.”
In Europe, Samhain was a Gaelic festival of the dead marking the end of the harvest and the beginning of the darkest time of year, a time when the spirit world was more closely aligned to the physical world. In the Americas, church ritual mixed with native celebration of ancestors.
Mayans, Incans and other Native Americans had great reverence for the dead and ancestor worship was culturally important.
That tradition blended into the Catholic holy days of the dead.
In many Latin countries, Nov. 2 is a national holiday — the Day of the Dead, or Dia de los Muertos, the climax of the Days of the Dead.
It’s the climax of three days of celebration: All Hallow’s Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.
People often dress as skeletons as a way of remembering the dead and celebrating their ancestors.
In Catholic churches on Nov. 2, for All Souls Day, one of the readings during the Mass is from the Book of Wisdom, which is biblical for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, but not for Protestants, who don’t include it in their Bible:
“The souls of the just are in the hand of God, and no torment shall touch them,” the Book of Wisdom says.
“They seemed, in the view of the foolish, to be dead; and their passing away was thought an affliction and their going forth from us, utter destruction. But they are in peace.”
Back in northwest Philippines, some relations visit the graves of their departed dead tomorrow and the next day – tomorrow for the souls of relatives 13 years old and below and the next day for loved ones 14 years old and above – where they would light candles on the identified resting places..
There are instances when the town priest is also available for quick prayers for the dead – who often intones “et oremus pro iis qui obliti sunt” (let us also pray for those who have been forgotten).
At the end of the prayer for the dead, the surviving relatives donate any amount to the priest – often larger than what they give during the second collection on Sundays in Catholic churches.
There are also times during All Saints Day and All Souls Day when members of the town band, in their civilian clothes, wait for relatives of the departed to ask them to play a funeral march or two around the tomb or the wooden cross beside the errant cadena de amor woody vine (Antigonon leptopus ) while relatives’ pleasant memories fly among the November crowns.