Celebrating All Saints Day in the Catholic Home- 16 easy ways to feast and have fun!
As a convert to the Catholic faith, I have fallen head-over-heels with celebrating the liturgical rhythm as a family and using it as a means to convey the faith to our children.
It is what made me create the Catholic Planner, start a feast table, look intentionally at the books I assign my children to read for school, and create a mega liturgical year reading list.
All Saints’ Day is just one of those great feast days on our calendar where we can live out our faith, but it is one of my favorites.
Here are 16 great ideas for how you and your family can celebrate this feast day in your own Catholic home.
16 Ways to Celebrate All Saints’ Day in the Catholic Home
1.Explain the Meaning Behind Halloween and All Saints’ Day
Take time sit down with your kids and talk about the connection between Halloween and All Saints’ Day. Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve) has been hijacked by our pagan culture and now highlights darkness instead of the hallowed (holy) saints.
Explain the church’s teaching on the Communion of Saints and focus on the beauty of these friends who have gone before us and are cheering us on to our heavenly home.
2.Throw an All Saints’ Day Party
Make this as easy or as complicated as you want! Our Catholic homeschool co-op usually has each participating family bring one game and one treat to distribute. This makes it super easy! Have the kids dress as their favorite saint and take turns explaining their saint’s story.
Our co-op’s All Saints’ Day Party is one of the highlights of our liturgical year!
3.Host an All Saints’ Trunk-or-Treat at your Parish
I love the idea of educating our faith community about the Catholic Saints by holding an All Saints’ Trunk-or-Treating party! Each car trunk becomes a place where kids can pick up treats, play a game, and learn about a Catholic Saint.
Check out Catholic Icing’s post on her parish’s Trunk-or-Treating success! What a fabulous idea for a parish to take on!
4.Have Your Children Dress as Their Favorite Saint
This is a super fun way to teach your children about the Saints. Challenge yourself to make an outfit from what you have on hand-it’s just more fun that way! Need some inspiration?
Our costumes from 2013!
Here are our costumes for 2015.
Our All Saints Costumes from 2015
Our Family’s All Saints 2016 Costumes
Catholic All Year has a post with 150 All Saints’ Costumes.
Catholic Icing has costume ideas for BOYS and GIRLS.
.Carve a Pumpkin with Christian Symbols
![[9431_184928979923_180230069923_3920465_447072_n-1.jpg]](https://i0.wp.com/4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ht4G15j2YjI/St9tY_QTdSI/AAAAAAAAMio/zjEjts88p-w/s1600/9431_184928979923_180230069923_3920465_447072_n-1.jpg)
Softly evangelize your trick-or-treaters by carving a Christian symbol in your pumpkin instead of the usual toothy grinned or spooky face. Check out these amazing “Saint-O-Lanterns” at Catholic Cuisine for inspiration and links to free templates.
We often carve a goofy face in one side of the pumpkin and then a cross or Icthus on the reverse side. We just turn our pumpkins around come November 1st.
Carving pumpkins too ambitious this year? Get out the paint and let the kids have at ’em!
6.Walk your children through the pumpkin gospel
This parable compares our life as a Christian to the life of a jack-o-lantern. It is a fun and tangible way to relate the fundamental gospel message to our children. Here is a printable Pumpkin Gospel to share with your kids while you carve along with a pumpkin prayer to finish your devotion.
7. Make Donuts (and Deliver!)
Our family has started serving donuts as part of our All Saints’ Day Tradition.
Story behind Donuts and All Saints: Supposedly a cook wanted to remind trick-or-treaters of the holiness of the day and invented a donut with a hole in the middle of an eternal circle to remind them of their call to “holiness” and eternity.
Our recipe makes a huge batch so we deliver extras to friends and shut-ins.
We have used this recipe for Crispy and Creamy Doughnuts successfully for the last few years.
8.Enjoy Saint-Themed Snacks/Meals
Catholic Icing has a long list of “Saintly” themed snack ideas. This would make a fun addition to your All Saints’ Day party or just choose a few snacks for your own family to enjoy.
9.Do Reverse-Trick-or-Treating with Shut-ins
I cannot take credit for this beautiful way to serve on All Saints’ Day. My sweet friend, Sarah, took her family (6 little ones under 9!) last year to a nursing home to hand out treats to the residents. This year she invited our co-op members to join them. It is so heartwarming to see your children bring a smile to another soul! Dress your children in costumes and serve those often forgotten!
10.Ask for Intercession
What is this great feast day all about? The gift of our friends in heaven who pray and help us to join them in eternity.
Ask for intercession from your favorite saint! Put a basket of holy cards on your feast table and loop through them asking for one Saint’s intercession everyday.
11.Give a gift
Gift someone (your child, family, friends, neighbors) with something special to call their hearts and mind to God. Here are some ideas:
- Peg Doll Saint
- Holy Cards
- Saint Book (here is our list of Must Reads for Young Catholics)
- Holy Heroes CD
12. Decorate the House
Whether you have a feast table or not, consider decorating your home for All Saints’ Day. Here are some ideas:
All Saints’ Tree from Catholic Inspired
All Saints’ Wreath from Family at the Foot of the Cross
All Saints’ Banner from Shower of Roses
All Saints’ Altar Decorations from Praying for Grace
Check out our family’s feast table through the year for more ideas on decorating the Catholic way!
13.Read a Saint Story (or two!)
My favorite way to teach anything (especially the faith) is through a well written story. I’ll be honest and say I’m not a fan of most Catholic children’s literature. It is often too dry…twaddle.
My rule?- Any story I read to my children must be one that I enjoy too! The Once Upon a Time Saints series are so beautifully written and are a favorite with our whole family. You can check out our family’s list of must reads for young Catholics here if you need more ideas.
(Update: I’ve been busy in 2020 making a MEGA liturgical year reading list. You can see all the liturgical monthly book list posts here and find the printable lists here.)
- Once Upon A Time Saints
- More Once Upon a Time Saints
- Around the Year: Once Upon a Time Saints
- Must Reads for Young Catholics
14. Go to Mass
Join the Saints around the altar and receive the wealth of grace freely given at God’s table. After all, this is a Holy Day of Obligation and is just as important as attending on Sunday!
15.Learn the Hymn “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God”
I love this hymn and the way it highlights the diversity of the Saints and our own call to holiness. My family always enjoys reading the book I Sing a Song of the Saints of God which highlights the hymn. There isn’t much of a story to this book, but it is fun to pick out the saints in the pictures. Use this book as you learn this hymn in your family’s Morning Basket.
16.Make some “Saintly” Crafts
While I’m not much of a crafter, it can be fun to set aside liturgical feasts to work on crafts as a family. Here are some of my favorites:
Paper Saint Chain from Catholic Icing
Saint Art from Look to Him and Be Radiant
All Saints’ Day Magnets from Catholic Playground
What are the special ways your family celebrates All Saints’ Day?
(*This post contains some affiliate links.)
Other posts you’ll love:
Liturgical Book Lists Month by Month
Catholic Planner (complete with ALL the major liturgical goings on)
Great ideas. This is my first year celebrating and my children are teenagers so I’m mentally practicing how graceful yet firm I’ll be when the eyerolling begins as I explain the festivities.
Yes, graceful and firm. Still trying to figure that one out here! I’d love to know what you are planning with that age group of kids!
On pinterest I found pictures of saints and some of their quotes which I copy/pasted and transferred to a blank 8×11 paper. I’ll print these out (I’ll see if I can get inexpensive frames) and I’m putting them all around the house. That will be the highlight, each area of the house will have a few spiritual nuggets of wisdom to greet them. I bought a deck of Saint cards from amazon to lay out on the table next to the small appetizers I plan on placing on the table:) I ordered some fun door decorations and plan on having the house smell like good food cooking all day with a fun monster mash cd playing in the background. I really want to make a centerpiece of eyeball candy or some such thing but I’ll have to check some recipes online!
Those are some very unique ideas. You remind me of my mother. Always doing things above and beyond!
LOVE the section “Enjoy Saint-Themed Snacks/Meals.” Our small country parish is having Mass on Monday evening, and is serving “treats” after Mass. We want to use some of the Saintly themed snake ideas. Our parish is ST. JOSEPH’S. It would be fitting to also include something centered around him. Any snack ideas tied to St. Joseph???
I think that is a great idea! What about something to do with the carpenter aspect of St. Joseph. Just off the top of my head- Maybe pretzels and call it St. Joseph’s lumber??? Or carrot sticks cut in the shape of lumber???
These are AWESOME!!!!! Thank you so much!!!!
You are so welcome, Angela! God bless and have a fabulous All Saints’!
Great article on celebrating all saints day! There is one thing that I think should be corrected though, Halloween or all hollows eve was NOT hijacked by pagans ….actually quite the other way around. You see old pagan tradition predates Christianity by thousands of years. All major Christian holidays were intact originally pagan holidays that the Christian church “hijacked” and converted them to a Christian Holiday. Sad but true! Enjoy your holidays! 😃
You are right here. Christians did originally hijack pagan holidays and converted them to something holy. I guess I was referring to our post-Christian culture re-hijacking them. Thanks for the clarification!