Due to the vagaries of the liturgical calendar, All Saints Day was not a holy day of obligation (at least in the U.S.), so today will combine them both. (There was a daily Mass as usual, but it was not obligatory.)
Coming in the backwash of Halloween festivities, it seems appropriate to pause and consider the dead – and the fate that awaits all of us. Science tells us that the most depressing time of year (in the northern hemisphere) is late January, where the holidays are fading into the distance, the weather stinks, and spring seems like an eternity away.
I think there is a second period of desolation between Halloween and Thanksgiving, when the days grow shorter, the last leaves fall, and everything becomes bleak and muddy. Indeed, in 2006 we had a late frost, and as the month progressed, cases of illness soared. I had to be hospitalized for pneumonia and spent the night in an examination room on regular gurney as the hospital was at maximum capacity.
A hard freeze is often your friend.
Since I entered the Church, the bleakness of both times has faded because the spiritual element has become more important. Instead of a letdown, the time after Halloween had additional richness in prayers for the dead, and the end of the liturgical year brings the anticipation of Advent.
Similarly, the return to Ordinary Time after Christmas offers a last respite before the stern discipline of Lent.
In the Sword of Honour trilogy, Evelyn Waugh repeatedly references the liturgical calendar over the secular one, and there is a lot to be said for doing the same. In the book, it illustrates the effort of the main character, Guy Crouchback, to live his faith in a time when disbelief and evil is running rampant.
In real life, it provides a necessary reminder that there is something that goes beyond the daily grind of secular life and material goods. Paying attention to the feast days of saints, fasting or abstaining from meat on certain days outside of Lent also remove us from the monotony of pleasure-seeking activities.
Chateau Lloyd 
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