Pyhäinpäivä: where to put a candle when the grave is in another country

The shopping bags are the first sign. They come through the cemetery gate while it is still stone and wet leaves, and inside them are white lanterns.

Inside them are white grave lanterns. One flame becomes ten. By dark, hundreds of candles have redrawn the cemetery.

This is pyhäinpäivä: Finland’s movable Saturday for remembering the dead, observed most visibly outdoors after sunset.

The brightest candles are for people buried elsewhere

The wall of light above is not a family grave. It is a shared memorial for people whose graves are somewhere else.

The names vary by cemetery. Look for muualle haudattujen muistomerkki, “memorial for those buried elsewhere”, or menneiden sukupolvien muistomerkki, “memorial for past generations”, which is what most Helsinki cemeteries call theirs. At Hietaniemi it is a flight of steps, signed Muualle haudattujen portaat, in block 20 of the new area. That is where you put a candle for somebody buried in another Finnish town, another country or at a grave you cannot reach. No name needs to be written on it.

These shared memorials can become the brightest point in the cemetery. Helsinki cemetery workers report that candles have increased at shared memorials; one parish spokesperson suggested that people moving farther from family graves may help explain why.¹²

The whole evening happens in four quiet moves

There is no ceremony at the gate. People arrive alone, in couples and in family groups. Nobody organises any of it: no start time, no list, nobody in charge - the same unsupervised shape as talkoot, with the work taken out. In early November the sun is down before five, so the graves can be glowing by late afternoon - the front edge of the dark season, months before the north loses its sunrise.³⁴

1. 1
   The bags arrive

   Inside are covered hautakynttilät, grave candles made to burn outdoors. People also carry matches or a lighter. Helsinki's 2026 instructions recommend a torch and warm clothes.
2. 2
   Families find their plots

   Large cemeteries are divided into numbered sections. Plot details and online grave searches matter once the paths go dark.
3. 3
   The first flames spread

   A candle may sit on the stone, on the earth in front of it or inside a permanent grave lantern. There is no required prayer or phrase.
4. 4
   The paths fill

   Some visitors stay by one grave. Others walk through the cemetery. In 2023, Hietaniemi and Malmi in Helsinki counted about 7,000 visitors between them.

The candle sea is younger than it looks

Candles appeared on Finnish graves before the 1940s, but the mass custom spread during and after World War II. It took hold first at soldiers’ graves, then moved to the graves of family members and other loved ones across Finland.⁵

The war explains why a scene that looks ancient became nationwide within living memory. The Christmas Eve version is older, and still the bigger one: the first documented grave candle in Finland was lit at Helsinki’s Vanha hautausmaa on Christmas Eve 1921, and Christmas Eve remains the more common of the two evenings to take a candle out.

The date moves every year

Finland’s pyhäinpäivä combines two observances that remain separate in some Christian traditions: All Saints’ Day on 1 November and All Souls’ Day on 2 November. Since 1955, the Finnish holiday has been observed on the Saturday between 31 October and 6 November.²

The Church Act names pyhäinpäivä as a church holiday.⁶ The Saturday rule means the number on the calendar changes each year. In 2026 it is 31 October.

Halloween falls on the same night in 2026. That is a calendar overlap, not another name for the same event: costume parties and the cemetery tradition are separate.

Ten words hidden in the candlelight

The name pyhäinpäivä contains a small fossil of old Finnish. Pyhäin is a plural genitive of pyhä, “saint” or “holy person”. Modern Finnish would more often use pyhien, but the rarer -in ending survives inside established compounds.⁷

In many candle services, the names of parish members who died during the previous year are read aloud. One candle is lit for each person, and their families may receive a personal invitation.²

Then somebody has to collect 5,000 lanterns

At Lahti’s Levon cemetery, workers collected about 5,000 candles after the 2024 holiday. A few years earlier, the total had been about 10,000.¹

Used lanterns leave wax, metal and plastic behind. Sorting rules vary by cemetery, so the bins on site are the ones to follow.

The Lahti count does not describe the whole country. Vantaa and Hämeenlinna have also reported declines, while Helsinki’s Malmi cemetery has seen more candles on graves and at shared memorials.¹

If you go in 2026

Pyhäinpäivä on 31. lokakuuta. All Saints’ Day is on 31 October.

• Check the cemetery’s opening hours and grave search before leaving.
• Bring a covered grave candle, matches or a lighter, a torch and warm clothes.
• Arrive before sunset if you need to find a particular grave; go after dark for the full candlelight.
• Follow the cemetery’s signs and leave used lanterns in the marked sorting bins.

You do not need a Finnish family grave or any religious belief to take part. A quiet walk is enough. Outside Finland, the date is still the thing to know: it is when the Finnish half of a family is standing in a cemetery and not answering the phone. If the person you miss is buried far away, one candle at the muualle haudattujen muistomerkki gives that absence a place.