Enjoy your Martlemass week! In Germany, because St. Martin is the patron of children, if you walked into a city towards dusk you would find yourself surrounding by crowds of singing children bearing lanters. Although St. Martin's day goes by mostly unnoticed in the US, it was at one time the central feast of autumn:
From the late 4th century to the late Middle Ages, much of Western Europe, including Great Britain, engaged in a period of fasting beginning on the day after St. Martin's Day, November 11. This fast period lasted 40 days, and was, therefore, called "Quadragesima Sancti Martini", which means in Latin "the forty days of St. Martin." At St. Martin's eve, people ate and drank very heartily for a last time before they started to fast. This fasting time was later called "Advent" by the Church.
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