Funerals USA
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Funerals USA offers funeral planning advice for a family’s executor in making many critical decisions. Features comparative pricing models for interment services in the United States.…disposal of the dead falls rather into a class with fashions, than with either customs or folkways on the one hand, or institutions on the other … social practices of disposing of the dead are of a kind with fashions of dress, luxury and etiquette. One of the interesting things about burial practices is that they provide many a clue to the customs and society of the living. The very word “antiquarian” conjures up the picture of a mild-eyed historian groping about amidst old tombstones, copying down epitaphs with their folksy inscriptions and irregular spelling, extrapolating from these a picture of the quaint people and homey ways of yore. There is unconscious wit: the widow’s epitaph to her husband, “Rest in peace - until we meet again.” We are left to wonder if this is some ritual act of contemplation, a heartfelt belief that when we die we meet those that have gone before us, or comforting words left for those that remain. For purposes of comparison they might recall the words of Andrew Marvell, a poet from an earlier culture, who thus addressed his coy mistress: The grave’s a fine and private place, but none, I think, do there embrace. They might rashly conclude that twentieth-century America was a nation of abjectly imitative conformists, devoted to machine-made gadgetry and mass-produced art of a debased quality; that its dominant theology was a weird mixture of primitive superstitions, superficial attitudes towards death, overlaid with a distinct tendency towards necrophilism… Where did our burial practices come from? There is little scholarship on the subject. Thousands of books have been written describing, cataloguing, theorizing about the funeral procedures of ancient and modern peoples from Aztecs to Zulus; but about contemporary American burial practices almost nothing has been written. The official historians of American undertaking describe the origin of our burial practices as follows: “As a result of a long slow development, with its roots deep in the history of Western civilization, it is the common American mind today that the dead merit professional funeral services from a lay occupational group. These services include embalming, the preparation of the body for final viewing, a waiting period between death and disposition, the use for everyone of a casket that is attractive and protects the remains, a dignified and ceremonious service with consideration for the feelings of the bereaved, and an expression of the individual and group beliefs. . . .” Elsewhere they assert: “The roots of American funeral behavior extend back in a direct line several thousand years to early Judaeo-Christian beliefs as to the nature of God, man and the hereafter … Despite the antiquity of these roots their importance as regards the treatment of the dead in the world that commonly calls itself Christian today cannot be overemphasized.” In two misinformation-packed paragraphs, we are assured not only that American funerals are based on hallowed custom and tradition, but that they conform to long-held religious doctrine. There is more than a hint of warning in these words for the would-be funeral reformer; he who would be bold enough to make light of or tamper with the fundamental beliefs and ancient traditions of a society in so sensitive an area as behavior towards its dead, had better think twice. A “long, slow development with its roots deep in the history of Western civilization,” or a short, fast sprint with its roots deep in money-making? A brief look backward would seem to establish that there is no resemblance between the funeral practices of today and those of even fifty to one hundred years ago, and that there is nothing in the “history of Western civilization” to support the thesis of continuity and gradual development of funeral customs. On the contrary, the salient features of the contemporary American funeral (beautification of the corpse, metal casket and vault, banks of store-bought flowers, ubiquitous offices of the “funeral director”) are all of very recent vintage in this country, and each has been methodically designed and tailored to extract maximum profit for the trade. |
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