The name will be called, a bell will chime and a candle will be lit at Crawford Street United Methodist Church Sunday to celebrate the lives of all those who have died in the past year.

Sunday is All Saints Day, and churches in the community and around the globe will be observing the day set aside to pay tribute to the dead.

“All Saints Day is a day to celebrate those who have gone on before us,” CSUMC minister the Rev. Cary Stockett said.

Celebrated on Nov. 1, All Saints Day has been officially observed in the Christian church since the year 609, Stockett said.

The original purpose of the day was to glorify God for all the saints, known and unknown, but today, All Saints Day is not only a day to remember those who have gone on but also a day to remember that we are family and of one body and a reaffirmation of our eternal life, he said.

In the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Sam Godfrey, who is the rector at Christ Episcopal Church, said All Saints Day is one of the seven principle feasts of the church year, denoted in the church’s publication of “Lesser Feasts and Fasts,” which contains feast days for the various men and women the Church wishes to honor.

In early times, those honored were people of heroic sanctity or “saints,” stated the 2006 edition of “Lesser Feasts and Fasts” but added that in the New Testament the word saint is used to describe the entire membership of the Christian community.

Christ Episcopal Church, like CSUMC, will honor its members who have died this year, not only during the liturgical prayers of the people, but also by listing their names in a book.

“The tradition has been to offer a book of remembrance for All Saints Day,” Godfrey said, which includes members’ names and names of friends and family who have died within the past year.

All Saints Day at St. Paul Catholic Church will include celebrating all of the saints in heaven, not just those canonized, Father Tom Lalor said.

“We will also be remembering those we have known and with whom we have worked and the ones we have loved,” he said.

In conjunction with All Saints Day, Catholics will also celebrate All Soul’s Day, also known by Hispanics as the Day of the Dead, Lalor said, which is commemorated on Nov. 2.

A Holy Rosary will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday at the Sisters of Mercy gravesite.

Father Lalor will bless the sisters’ and priests’ gravesites and any other family’s gravesite should anyone desire it.