“So what are some of the Lutheran holidays?” a student asked me recently. “Lutheran holidays?” I questioned back, “what do you mean?” “You know, like Advent and Lent and…” I got the picture. “Those aren’t Lutheran holidays. Really the only distinctly “Lutheran” holiday is Reformation Day….the rest of those, they are just….historical Church holidays that a lot of churches have stopped celebrating.” I guess there are a few other Lutheran holidays now that I think about it – days like the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession (June 25) and the Diet of Worms (Luther’s famous, “here I stand” line came from this) on April 18. But the point is really this – most of our holidays aren’t “Lutheran” they are just Christian – Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity Sunday, etc. 
In fact, historically speaking, Lutherans tended to shy away from the celebrations of “holidays” such as saints days and things because in Germany at the time of the Reformation, there were so many saints days being celebrated that it was having a negative effect on the economy (imagine what would happen if your job had at least a one day holiday every week or so). It was uneconomical, and Lutherans have always been and continue to be very positive on the concept of vocation and the way that simple labor is a God-orchestrated service and good work toward our neighbor.
The Lutheran way of celebrating the Church-wide All Saints holiday is a sort of picture of this. All Saints day for Lutherans should probably be spelled with a lowercase “s” because we celebrate all “saints” on that day. Not the big important holiday-type “Saints” like “Saint Paul” and “Saint Patrick” and “Saint Augustine” but the ordinary “saints” who have gone on before us. As Lutherans we don’t just celebrate the saints who preach well or evangelize thousands or write big hairy theology books —- we celebrate the saints who taught and raised our kids, the saints who built our houses, the saints who taught us simple Bible stories, the saints who made our clothes, the saints who kept law and order, the saints who cooked and served our food, the saints who got our power back on after a hurricane, the saints who showered before they went to work, and the saints who showered after they got home from work. And honestly, those “lowercase saints”, we would argue are more important than the “upper case Saints” most of the time.
So today, celebrate the lowercase saints who have gone before you and are with Jesus now. Because this is their holiday, and it is yours too – because due to the death and Resurrection of Jesus, one day we will be celebrating your sainthood being completed in your entrance into eternity.