All Souls' Day; Día de los Muertos
In case you're confused, yesterday was All Saints' Day; today is All Souls' Day.
Here's the scoop: All the dead people in heaven are saints. Naturally, there are whole lots of them, and we don't know all their names. If, through whatever process at whichever point in time, the Church decides that it knows of one of them, that person is canonized -- the person will have been a saint already; canonization just means they're recognized on earth for it. All through the year, there are saints' days, when we commemorate various dead people we believe to be in heaven. But all the dead in heaven don't have saints' days, on account of not being all recognized. So All Saints' Day is the day we celebrate ALL the saints, whether or not we know who they are.
This would include, presumably, some of our relatives. And also persons such as Flannery O'Connor, as far as I'm concerned. If we could just get enough of us to pray to St. Flannery, as I think of her, and get some miracles documented, we could get her canonized. That's one of my little projects. (I figure she can be the patron saint of sufferers from lupus, of course, since that's what she died of, and auto-immune diseases in general, and also writers' block, though I don't expect any documented miracles out of that last. Though I personally expect to get the most use out of it.)
So. That takes care of All Saints'. All Souls', on the other hand, is for all the dead who are not in hell (sorry -- they're beyond hope, I'm told), but aren't in heaven, either -- the ones who are sort of in the vestibule, getting the mud off their galoshes. So we pray for them, that they should get cleaned up soon and allowed into the feast.
I never did getting around to making sugar skulls this year, alas. But we are eating beans and rice tonight. Crucial to eat beans and rice. I'm cooking mine up with the last of the pesto I made this year.
Years ago I lived in a collective household in San Francisco (Avalon, oh, Avalon), where we called this the beginning of the Butter Festival. The Butter Festival lasts till about the 3rd of January, when one is finally so sick of eating rich foods that one starts eating fruits and vegetables and working out. But I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, and now it's the start of the Reduced-Fat Margarine Festival, and the fruits and vegetables and working out lasts all year. And we didn't get a lot of desserts this weekend. And what's more, it doesn't actually make one's time in the vestibule shorter.
I gather that I'm missing the Butter Festival dreadfully. Better go bake something, before I get out of hand.
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My dad, by the way, is all perturbed cause I pronounce "all y'all" incorrectly, and it should be pronounced "allay'all," as, he says, in the conjugation "I'm agoin', you're agoin', she's agoin'." Fine, fine, fine. I recognize him as the expert in these matters, but I'd just like to point out that if he wanted me to grow up and talk right, he shouldn't have dragged me out of the ancient homeland of our gun-toting ancestors.
Here's the scoop: All the dead people in heaven are saints. Naturally, there are whole lots of them, and we don't know all their names. If, through whatever process at whichever point in time, the Church decides that it knows of one of them, that person is canonized -- the person will have been a saint already; canonization just means they're recognized on earth for it. All through the year, there are saints' days, when we commemorate various dead people we believe to be in heaven. But all the dead in heaven don't have saints' days, on account of not being all recognized. So All Saints' Day is the day we celebrate ALL the saints, whether or not we know who they are.
This would include, presumably, some of our relatives. And also persons such as Flannery O'Connor, as far as I'm concerned. If we could just get enough of us to pray to St. Flannery, as I think of her, and get some miracles documented, we could get her canonized. That's one of my little projects. (I figure she can be the patron saint of sufferers from lupus, of course, since that's what she died of, and auto-immune diseases in general, and also writers' block, though I don't expect any documented miracles out of that last. Though I personally expect to get the most use out of it.)
So. That takes care of All Saints'. All Souls', on the other hand, is for all the dead who are not in hell (sorry -- they're beyond hope, I'm told), but aren't in heaven, either -- the ones who are sort of in the vestibule, getting the mud off their galoshes. So we pray for them, that they should get cleaned up soon and allowed into the feast.
I never did getting around to making sugar skulls this year, alas. But we are eating beans and rice tonight. Crucial to eat beans and rice. I'm cooking mine up with the last of the pesto I made this year.
Years ago I lived in a collective household in San Francisco (Avalon, oh, Avalon), where we called this the beginning of the Butter Festival. The Butter Festival lasts till about the 3rd of January, when one is finally so sick of eating rich foods that one starts eating fruits and vegetables and working out. But I am old with wandering through hollow lands and hilly lands, and now it's the start of the Reduced-Fat Margarine Festival, and the fruits and vegetables and working out lasts all year. And we didn't get a lot of desserts this weekend. And what's more, it doesn't actually make one's time in the vestibule shorter.
I gather that I'm missing the Butter Festival dreadfully. Better go bake something, before I get out of hand.
****************************
My dad, by the way, is all perturbed cause I pronounce "all y'all" incorrectly, and it should be pronounced "allay'all," as, he says, in the conjugation "I'm agoin', you're agoin', she's agoin'." Fine, fine, fine. I recognize him as the expert in these matters, but I'd just like to point out that if he wanted me to grow up and talk right, he shouldn't have dragged me out of the ancient homeland of our gun-toting ancestors.
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