All Saint’s Day in the Philippines
A typical cemetery in the Philippines
November 1 is a special day in the Philippines. Along with the rest of Christendom, Filipinos observe (some would say celebrate–I’ll get into that later) All Saints’ Day, our yearly trek to the cemeteries to visit and remember dead relatives. Technically, the visit should occur on November 2, All Souls’ Day, which would be the more appropriate day to visit the dead. However the overwhelming majority of Filipinos do visit on the first, even though both November 1 and 2 (and sometimes the afternoon of October 31) are national holidays in the Philippines.
When I was growing up, a typical All Saints’ Day would involve waking up early to prepare for the long day ahead, in order to leave early because traffic would be worse than usual. Once outside the cemetery, navigating to my grandparents’ tombstones is like an obstacle course; aside from trying to avoid all the other people moving in a thousand different directions, we constantly have to remember exactly where the tombstone is (things change a lot in a year), and more often than not a typhoon would’ve visited Manila a few days before in which case we’d have to wade through ankle-deep brown water. We would light candles and lay flowers on the tomb/s. On some years we would do this twice: one for visiting dead relatives on my father’s side and then another one for my mother’s side.
In some ways All Saints’ Day is similar to Thanksgiving in America. It’s the one day outside of Christmas that relatives who seldom see each other the rest of the year get to see and catch up each other. Even “cemetery neighbors”–people whose relatives are beside yours in the cemetery–start to feel like pseudo-relatives because you see them every year, get to talk to them and, especially for the kids, watch them grow.
Some families take it a little further: they would stay the night before (the 31st), and basically have a party–play cards, have some food and drinks and basically be merry. The whole concept I guess is to keep the dead company–however weird that might sound.
