All Saints Day!!

Happy All Saints Day!

(Actually it was November 1st but who's keeping track right?)

Here it's a really huge holiday so the day before and the day after the cemetary was a huge bustle of people. And if you can believe it, they even showed a movie in the cemetary at 7 pm (which is pitch black here!)

This is a jeep bringing a load of people in to celebrate!

These next two photos just show the fun atmosphere of it all. People set tents up over their loved ones graves and sat and chatted and just had a grand old time.
These are the rows of booths that sold things from cell phones to food, to drinks, to balloons and I'm sure all manner of interesting items we aren't even aware of. There was a Dunkin Donuts stand and we thought that it would be our only chance to have donuts on an early morning so Reg and the girls walked down and he said it looked like they had sat there for a few days so we decided to pass.

I know this picture doesn't do justice at all. Not only do people set up the tents but they light so many candles. So we could see the cemetary on the hillside was just aglow with flames. It really was quite beautiful. Many people spend all night in the cemetary from the 1st to the 2nd. All the festivities are on the 1st but then there is a special mass on the morning of the 2nd. I think this year was quite subdued due to all of the rain that we got during the night. But a surprising number of people did stay all night.

Just a side note, we live incredibly close to this cemetary. We are told it can get quite crazy and loud and the people frequently have trouble sleeping through it, but we were thankful for a relatively quiet night. And today the amount of trash that we passed in the cemetary was quite amazing! Thankfully that's job security for the grounds crew of the cemetary and even temporary jobs for others!