ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the revival of the Catholic All Soul's feast, an annual ritual to commemorate the dead, but in a non-ecclesiastic context. To Roman Catholics All Soul's day is a feast day when one prays for the souls of the dead. According to popular belief in the Netherlands and other countries the souls of the dead visit the living at All Souls. Both the All Soul's celebrations of the church and the religious ideas and practices of lay people form part of lived religion. The five 'All Souls everywhere' celebrations in North Holland attracted remarkable numbers of non-churchgoers. In 2005 new All Soul's celebrations took shape, initiated by two artists, Ida van der Lee and Mary Fontaine, who presented themselves as ritual mentors for artistic shows at cemeteries in which they explicitly involved the deceased's relatives. The chapter describes the burgeoning tradition of extra-ecclesiastic celebrations and artistic forms of new rituals.
