Todos Los Santos – All Saints’ Day

Todos Los Santos – All Saints’ Day

Todos Los Santos is celebrated in the Philippines in a big way. This is the day when most people would go to the cemetery to sit by the graves of love ones who had passed.

It is not a day of mourning but a happy family get together. Candles are lit, flowers are arranged beautifully by the headstones and around the cleaned and newly painted graves. Prayers are said, stories are told, there are even singing. This get together usually culminate by dining on delicious food and snacks right there by the grave. 😉
——————-

Some people live with the dead. Families with young children have made the cemetery their abode on a permanent basis. These people are mostly the dispossessed; no home to go to. Instead they trespass into the beautiful ornately crafted mausoleum, some are not securely locked. Sometimes they would build a shanty out of cardboard boxes, bit of pieces of woods, rugs and leaves between the graves.

These people usually earn a little money from cleaning, clearing and maintaining the graves for the busy people or those who live out of town.

———————————–

The last time I visited the North Cemetery was when I went home to the Philippines in 2006. My father’s grave was different from how I remembered it. It was taller as my beloved grandfather was interred right on top of my father’s grave.

It also made me remember an incident at the North cemetery in 1985. It was another Todos los Santos. It started raining, really pouring. Everyone, at that moment, decided to go home, so out we trekked into the fast flooding cemetery. It was a slow progress as there were a lot of people and the flood was fast turning into a knee-deep red sticky, slippery muddy water. After 10 minutes the queue of people walking out stalled altogether. Suddenly like a wildfire, whispers had come to pass that the huge gates of the North Cemetery had been shut closed so no one can get out – not before each one had signed a petition for Cory Aquino to run for presidency. she let it be known that she would only run for the top office if she gets a million signature.

That was one dark moment in my personal history. It was an abomination of the All Saints’ day.  I have never been so frightened as the throng of people had suddenly turned into a stampede. My quick thinking younger brother dragged Marilou and I next to a wall to get out from all the confusion. To this day I thank God that my mother and youngest brother had decided to go home a couple of hours earlier.

We did not have to sign the petition because the huge gates were opened at the eleventh hour, probably because any longer the gates were closed the angrier the people would have become and there would have been a bloodbath for sure.