All Saints' and All Souls' Day
In the Catholic calendar, All Saints' Day (November 1) honors all the saints and martyrs, known and unknown, and is followed on November 2 by the commemoration of the faithful departed. The tradition traces this observance to the early Christian practice of gathering at the graves of martyrs to pray and hold Mass in their memory, a practice that later gave rise to churches built on those same sites.
The work within the Santo Daime calendar
Mestre Irineu held a work spanning All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day from the earliest years of the doctrine in Rio Branco, and members came to call the date simply Finados (the Day of the Dead). Later in the tradition's history, once several of his closest early companions had themselves passed away, he asked that their own hinários be sung on this date alongside his newer hymns.
Today the hinários of Germano Guilherme, João Pereira, Maria Damião, and Antônio Gomes are sung and danced on the night of November 1 into November 2, together with Mestre Irineu's later hymns. As on other festejos, the rosary opens at 6:00 p.m., the Daime is served from 6:45 p.m., and the dance begins at 7:00 p.m.; after midnight, once the date has turned to Finados, the dancing continues without the viva (a shouted response used earlier in the work). The work closes with the Santa Missa, and it is customary for those present to visit the graves of family members afterward. The blue uniform is worn for this work.
The companions honored on this date
Germano Guilherme, João Pereira, Maria Damião, and Antônio Gomes are remembered within the doctrine as Mestre Irineu's earliest companions and as the authors of hinários considered, after his own, to hold particular importance in the tradition. Honoring them on this date is, within the community, a way of holding their memory alongside the broader remembrance of All Souls' Day.