To people of the city, the real people of the city, as they like to be called, not to observe the day means to have no dead, no ancestors."

Grace King, 1895

All Saints' Day

All Saints' Day occurs each year on November 1st. Traditionally this was a major family event culminating weeks of tomb cleaning and maintenance activity. Flowers, mostly chrysanthemums, by the cartloads would come into the cemetery and the tombs would be decorated with vases of flowers and immortelles, or wreaths of flowers, beads or hair. During the day the cemeteries would be packed with people visiting the tombs and recalling past memories. Priests were on hand during the day and orphans, accompanied by nuns, would sit at the gate to collect donations.

In Louisiana, the celebration of death does not end with the funeral.1

The festival of the dead might be called the festival of the history of the city. Year after year from under their decorations of evergreens and immortelles, roses and chrysanthemums, the tombstones recall to the All-Saints pilgrims the names and dates of the past; identifying the events with the sure precision of geological strata.2

Historically, this yearly maintenance and attention kept the tombs well sealed and protected the interior structure from the aggressive New Orleans environment.

"It is the day in New Orleans when all the faithful go to the cemeteries to care for the graves of their loved ones. They whitewash the plaster walls of the vaults, clean the names cut into the marble slabs. And finally, they deck the tombs with flowers."3

By the end of the nineteenth century, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was overcrowded and had fallen out of favor as New Orleans residents elected the more fashionable cemeteries of Lafayette and Metairie. As interment activity fell, so did visitation and family maintenance activities, leading to much of the deterioration seen in the cemetery today. However, new interest in the cemetery as an historic site has spurred volunteers to take up some of the traditional limewashing chores and families still celebrate All Saints' Day at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

Also, See Funerary Plants

1. Leon Ronquillo, Matters of Life and Death, New Orleans, 1979.

2. King, Grace. New Orleans: The Place and The People, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1895, 400-401.

3. Vampire character Louis describes All Saints' Day in the Anne Rice novel, Interview with the Vampire, New York : Knopf, 1976, 183.