All Souls’ Day
Chamber’s Book of Days has this to say:
This is a festival celebrated by the Roman Catholic Church, on behalf of the souls in purgatory, for whose release the prayers of the faithful are this day offered up and masses performed. It is said to have been first introduced in the ninth century by Odilon, abbot of Cluny; but was not generally established till towards the end of the tenth century. Its observance was esteemed of such importance, that in the event of its falling on a Sunday, it was ordered not to be postponed till the Monday, as in the case of other celebrations, but to take place on the previous Saturday, that the souls of the departed might suffer no detriment from the want of the prayers of the church. It was customary in former times, on this day, for persons dressed in black to traverse the streets, ringing a dismal-toned bell at every corner, and calling on the inhabitants to remember the souls suffering penance in purgatory, and to join in prayer for their liberation and repose.
At Naples, it used to be a custom on this day to throw open the charnel-houses, which were lighted up with torches and decked with flowers, while crowds thronged through the vaults to visit the bodies of their friends and relatives, the fleshless skeletons of which were dressed up in robes and arranged in niches along the walls. At Salerno, also, we are told, that a custom prevailed previous to the fifteenth century, of providing in every house on the eve of All-Souls-Day, a sumptuous entertainment for the souls in purgatory who were supposed then to revisit temporarily, and make merry in, the scene of their earthly pilgrimage. Every one quitted the habitation, and after spending the night at church, returned in the morning to find the whole feast consumed, it being deemed eminently inauspicious if a morsel of victuals remained uneaten. The thieves who made a harvest of this pious custom, assembling, then, from all parts of the country, generally took good care to avert any such evil omen from the inmates of the house by carefully carrying off whatever they were unable themselves to consume. A resemblance may be traced in this observance, to an incident in the story of Bel and the Dragon, in the Apocrypha.