The Autumn is already, if you think about it, a season of remembering. Each leaf that turns from green, through yellow to flaming red, and then drops to the ground shrivelled and brown, recalls Spring and Summer days that will not come again, though other Springs and Summers will.

So we are already in the mood when we come to the feasts of All Souls and All Saints, Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday. All Souls was the original feast of the Church, to remember the faithfull departed. To this was added, much later on, the feast of All Saints, because the Church wished to celebrate its canonised saints (we are all 'saints' -we are sanctified by Jesus and the Holy Spirit- but we have not all been canonised in the way that John Henry Newman was recently in the Vatican. 

The Armistice came into force on most of the European battlefields at 11am on the 11th November 1918. The peace treaty ending the war was not signed until 1919 and in some theatres mobilisation didn't happen until 1920.

Remembrance Sunday was created to mark the heroism and the loss of both world wars. In May 1945, just before VE Day, the new government began consultation with the churches and the British Legion on the future of remembrance. Armistice Day in 1945 actually fell on a Sunday, avoiding the need to change the wartime practice. Some thought that to continue with the 11 November would focus more on the First World War and downplay the importance of the Second. Other dates suggested were 8 June (VE Day), 6 June (D-Day), 15 August (VJ Day), 3 September (the declaration of war), and even 15 June (the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215). The Archbishop of Westminster proposed that the second Sunday in November should be named Remembrance Sunday in commemoration of both World Wars, a suggestion which was endorsed by the Home Office in January 1946.