!!!Allerheiligen

All Saints' Day, November 1: Although the feast of the unknown saints 
is not a day of remembering the dead in the Roman Catholic church, All 
Saints' Day is (together with All Souls' Day, November 2) the 
preferred date for visiting cemeteries (decoration of graves, 
processions, blessings, prayers). Public forms of commemorating the 
dead include submerging wreaths for those who died by drowning. In 
earlier times, special bread rolls ("Gebildbrote") were distributed to 
children and the poor as representatives of the "Poor Souls" on both 
of these days. The tradition of "Krapfenschnappern" (an eastern 
Tyrolean regional custom in which people went from house to house 
asking for food on All Saints' Day, now a children's custom) was also 
linked to the beliefs centered around the "Poor Souls". Another 
custom, in which straw braids are thrown onto the roofs of houses of 
marriageable girls, formerly practiced by fraternities in the 
Weinviertel region, is now only found in rare cases, as its social and 
economic foundation has disappeared.

!Further reading
H. Koren, Die Spende, 1954; E. Burgstaller, Das 
Allerseelenbrot, 1970; H. Fielhauer, Allerheiligenstriezel aus Stroh, 
1969 (OeWF scientific film); O. Bockhorn and L. Nopp, 
Krapfenschnappern, 1984 (OeWF documentary film).


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