All Saints' Day Trivia
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47 free All Saints' Day trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
All Saints' Day on November 1 honours every saint, known and unknown, and sits at the heart of Allhallowtide between Halloween and All Souls' Day. These 47 questions trace its history from 4th-century martyr feasts through Pope Boniface IV's Pantheon, Alcuin and Charlemagne's court, and Louis the Pious's 835 decree, then tour the customs: chrysanthemums in France, Allerheiligenstriezel in Austria, kites in Guatemala, Undás in the Philippines. The set works for Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist classrooms and youth groups, and for a quiz night round on how the world marks the start of November. Every answer is cited.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which popular holiday falls on the vigil of All Saints' Day?
Halloween
Halloween. The name is a Scottish shortening of All Hallows' Even, the evening before All Hallows, in which 'hallow' is an old word for a saint.
Q 02What is the name of the three-day season that includes All Saints' Day?
Allhallowtide
Allhallowtide. 'Hallow' is an old word for a saint and 'tide' an old word for a season, so the name simply means the time of all the saints; it runs from the eve of the feast to All Souls' Day.
Q 03For Catholics, All Saints' Day is a holy day of obligation, which means the faithful are required to do what?
Attend Mass
Attend Mass. Church law names ten such days besides Sundays but lets each country's bishops drop some or move them to a Sunday, so the list differs around the world.
Q 04The Eastern Orthodox churches keep All Saints not in November but on which Sunday?
First Sunday after Pentecost
First Sunday after Pentecost. The Orthodox reasoning is that saints are the fruit of the Holy Spirit's descent at Pentecost, so the two feasts fall a week apart.
Q 05The Coptic Orthodox Church honours its saints not on November 1 but at which new-year feast?
Nayrouz
Nayrouz. Coptic years are counted from AD 284, when the persecuting emperor Diocletian took power, so New Year's Day is also the day for remembering those who died for the faith.
Q 06What festal rank does All Saints' Day hold in Catholicism?
Solemnity
Solemnity. It is the highest rank in the Roman calendar, above feasts and memorials, so when November 1 falls on a Sunday the saints take precedence over the ordinary Sunday.
Q 07The celebration of All Saints' Day begins on the evening before with which service of the daily office?
Vespers
Vespers. The Church's greatest days are kept from sundown the evening before, echoing the Genesis refrain 'evening came, and morning followed'.
Q 08In Catholic theology, the day commemorates all who have attained what?
The beatific vision
The beatific vision. It means seeing God face to face in heaven, and Catholic teaching counts everyone who has reached it as a saint, which is why the feast honours saints 'known and unknown'.
Q 09Those in heaven are traditionally called the Church what?
Triumphant
Triumphant. The image is military: Christians on earth are the Church militant, soldiers still struggling against sin, so those who have reached heaven have won their triumph.
Q 10Which ancient Roman building did Pope Boniface IV consecrate as a church in 609 or 610?
Pantheon
Pantheon. Becoming a church is what saved it: in use ever since, the temple once dedicated to all the gods is among the best preserved of ancient Rome's buildings.
Q 11Rome's forerunner of All Saints' Day, kept on May 13, shared its date with which pagan festival of restless ghosts?
Lemuria
Lemuria. On its nights, the poet Ovid says, a Roman householder rose at midnight and threw black beans behind him, chanting nine times that with them he bought off the family ghosts.
Q 12Which European capital was wrecked by an earthquake on All Saints' Day in 1755, as crowds filled its churches?
Lisbon
Lisbon. Because of the feast much of the city was in church when the quake struck; the buildings fell on the worshippers, and fires burned for about six days.
Q 13Which Northumbrian scholar at Charlemagne's court was keeping All Saints' Day on November 1 by 800?
Alcuin
Q 21Which composer wrote Sine Nomine, the familiar tune for "For All the Saints"?
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams. He wrote the tune for The English Hymnal of 1906, displacing the Victorian melody the hymn had been sung to, and gave it a Latin title meaning 'without name'.
Q 22The phrase 'the communion of saints', the belief behind All Saints' Day, comes from which Christian text?
The Apostles' Creed
The Apostles' Creed. The phrase means that the living and the dead form one body in which the good of each is shared with the others, the idea behind asking saints for their prayers.
Q 23In the Church of England, All Saints' Day is ranked as what?
Principal Feast
Alcuin. Schooled at York, he became the leading teacher at Charlemagne's court and wrote to Arno of Salzburg in favour of the November feast, so he may have helped carry the date to the Continent.
Q 14Which son and successor of Charlemagne made the November 1 feast a day of obligation across the Frankish Empire?
Louis the Pious
Louis the Pious. He acted at the urging of Pope Gregory IV, and the date he fixed across his empire is the one Western churches still keep.
Q 15Which Celtic festival did James Frazer argue lay behind the November 1 date?
Samhain
Samhain. The historian Ronald Hutton disagrees: he argues it marked summer's end, not a festival of the dead, and that ancient feasts for the dead fell in spring.
Q 16Which work by Michelangelo did the pope inaugurate on All Saints' Day in 1512?
Sistine Chapel ceiling
Sistine Chapel ceiling. Michelangelo finished four years of work that October, and Pope Julius II, nephew of the Sixtus who gave the chapel its name, opened it on the feast.
Q 17What is the name for a prolongation of a feast, which All Saints' Day once had?
Octave
Octave. Pope Sixtus IV gave All Saints' Day one in the 15th century, but in today's Roman calendar only Easter and Christmas are still kept for eight days.
Q 18What is the liturgical colour for All Saints' Day in the Catholic Church?
White
White. Red is the usual colour for saints who died for their faith, but All Saints' Day, which also honours the many who did not, is kept in the colour of joy.
Q 19Which 18th-century preacher wrote in his journal that All Saints' Day was 'a festival I truly love'?
John Wesley
John Wesley. The founder of Methodism rejected prayers to saints, yet he scolded those too wary to give God 'solemn thanks for the lives and deaths of his saints'.
Q 20Which passage from the Sermon on the Mount is the Gospel reading in Catholic churches on All Saints' Day?
The Beatitudes
The Beatitudes. Their run of 'Blessed are' sayings, on the poor in spirit, the merciful and the peacemakers, reads as a portrait of the unsung holiness the feast honours.
Principal Feast. Only nine days hold that rank, Christmas Day and Easter Day among them, and on each one Holy Communion must be celebrated in every cathedral and parish church.
Q 24In Lutheran churches, the eve of All Saints' Day is also kept as which commemoration?
Reformation Day
Reformation Day. Tradition holds that Martin Luther posted his Ninety-five Theses on that very eve in 1517, and much of northern and eastern Germany keeps the anniversary as a public holiday.
Q 25Which braided loaf is the traditional All Saints' Day gift in Austria?
Allerheiligenstriezel
Allerheiligenstriezel. Godparents give the plaited loaf to their godchildren, and Vienna's bakers once handed them free to regular customers, a custom they gave up in 1901.
Q 26Which flower do Belgians and the French traditionally place on graves for the day?
Chrysanthemum
Chrysanthemum. It is one of the few flowers at its best in early November, and the link with graves is now so strong that in France it is a faux pas to give one as a gift.
Q 27What is All Saints' Day called in France?
La Toussaint
La Toussaint. The feast gives its name to the two-week autumn break in French schools, les vacances de la Toussaint, so for families the word also means holiday time.
Q 28Which of these German states keeps All Saints' Day as a public holiday?
Bavaria
Bavaria. Five states in the west and south take the day off, and they class it as a 'silent day' on which public entertainment has to respect the day's serious character.
Q 29Legend has Martin Luther nailing his Ninety-five Theses to the door of All Saints' Church in which German town?
Wittenberg
Wittenberg. The timing suited the church: its famous collection of relics went on display for the feast, the biggest day of its year.
Q 30What is the Polish name for All Souls' Day, the day after All Saints'?
Zaduszki
Zaduszki. The name is roughly 'the day of prayers for the souls'; because only November 1 is a day off in Poland, most families light their grave candles on All Saints' Day instead.