All Saints' Day has been part of the Christian tradition for a very long time. According to Christianity.com, it dates back to the early 7th century. The Roman Empire was originally a polytheistic culture that worshiped many gods, and when Christianity began to rise there were periods of intense persecution, and many early Christians died.

For example, PBS reports that after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 A.D., Emperor Nero sought to distract the unhappy public by attacking Christians — at the time a small and little understood sect. He had many arrested, tortured, and publicly executed. Christians were targets of official state terror for hundreds of years, with the last major period of violent persecution occurring under Emperor Diocletian in the early 4th century, according to Britannica.

But by the 7th century Rome was officially Christian, and Emperor Phocas gave the Pantheon — a temple dedicated to the many gods of Rome's original religions — to the pope. Owlcation reports that Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon on May 13, 609 A.D. Britannica explains that Boniface dedicated the day to the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus Christ, and to all the martyrs who had died in the persecutions of the Christians over the years — not saints specifically, but martyrs. This early version of All Saints' Day would remain on that date for more than 200 years.

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