Saturday, 9 May 2015

An Introduction To International Funeral Customs

By Alta Alexander


Making plans for funerals is not something unique to the United States or western cultures. There has always been rites and ways to celebrate and honour the passage of life into death. They have around as long as humans have been in existence. Most of the funeral rites are rooted in various regions. International funeral customs that still exist today have become a means of unique celebrations for various countries and cultures.

In as much as funeral plans differ depending on cultures, there does not exist a universal demand plan for a funeral. There are differing customs as observed with varying international localities. For the Chinese, the bigger the number of attending people, the higher the luck a family attains. Attending numbers represent the level of prosperity the deceased shall attain in their afterlife. This leads to hiring of mourners to grace funeral ceremonies for those that can afford this.

In the Philippines and for the Pilipino around the world, funerals last for days, a minimum of three to as many as seven. Many people in attendance for the ceremony remain until the entire ceremony is over. Concerning Haitians, a deceased persons family members take full responsibility for a large part of the funeral planning. This involves dressing or preparing the deceased body in readiness for burial. Displays or expressions of grief have need suppression until all the possessions a departed owned have left their home.

During Amish community funerals, the entire town or village shares the event. Most of the families make the choices where traditional funeral planning takes place at the funeral home. They focus on simplicity where a simple box made of wood is used. There is also no cosmetic work done on the deceased. Other things such as ornate gravestones, flowers or even mourning dress codes are a bare minimum.

Within the Thai community, cremation is almost universal. Customs include preparing a body for the rites with members of the family placing coins onto a deceased mouth. A white thread ties hands and feet of a deceased. Flowers, money and candles go into the hands. Additional flowers and monetary gifts adorn a deceased pyre as it goes into cremations.

Bolivians have traditional customs that happen to be unique and not seen anywhere else in the world. They include separate ceremonies performed for a deceased clothing. This customary rite releases the deceased soul to the after-world according believes Bolivians hold.

In many cases, internationally observed funeral rites are simply extensions of funeral plans most people are familiar about. There is also collective reverence for a deceased and attention to their personal items. It is comes as an opportunity for families and friends to gather together and mourn irrespective of where they are all respectively traveling from.

The incorporation of traditional as well as religious rites offers people a means to personalize plans for funerals. In most instances, the ceremony is a means to assent to the wishes and beliefs of a departed. In a bid to adhere to time honoured practices or rites, people often leave instructions about the manner their families shall handle their funerals. Many people place such instructions in their written wills.




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