St. Martin's Day

November 11, Monday

St. Martin's Day
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Saint Martin's Day, also called the Funeral of Saint Martin, Martinstag or Martinmas, as well as Old Halloween and Old Hallowmas Eve, is the Funeral day of Saint Martin of Tours (else Martin le Miséricordieux) and is celebrated on 11 November each year. The feast was widely seen as the preferred time for the butchering of "Martinmas beef" from prime, fattened cattle, geese, other livestock and the ending of the toil of autumn wheat seeding (sowing). Hiring fairs were more abundant than usual, where farm laborers could choose, or others had, to seek new posts.

Saint Martin of Tours was a Roman soldier who was baptised as an adult and became a bishop in a French town. The most notable of his saintly acts was he had cut his cloak in half to share with a beggar during a snowstorm, to save him from the cold as then that night, he dreamt of Jesus, wearing the half-cloak and saying to the angels, "here is Martin, the Roman soldier who is now baptised; he has clothed me." Saint Martin died on November 8, 397, and was buried three days later.

St. Martin's Day

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St. Martin's Day in other years

St. Martin's Day in other countries

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