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F Funerals and Memorial older members of a society while younger mem- Practices bers of a group seem open to experimentation and new styles of memorialization. William G. Hoy Funerals and memorial practices exist for two Medical Humanities Program, Baylor University, reasons and individuals and groups may hold one Waco, TX, USA or some combination of these beliefs. Among many people groups, funerals are thought to hold significance primarily for appeasement of the Synonyms dead or are a necessary component to assure the deceased person’s “safe passage” to the next plane Funeral ceremonies, Funeral memorialization; of existence. Among others, funerals are seen as Memorial ceremonies commemorative ceremonies primarily designed for the comfort of bereaved family and/or community, including perhaps, the expiation of guilt Definition over words and actions between bereaved survivors and deceased (Pine 1972) (See ▶ “Social Funerals and memorial practices refer to the var- support in bereavement”). Nearly all communities ious religious, cultural, and kinship rituals that studied have one or more ritual “experts” who mark the death of an individual and provide social take their cues from the primary interests of the support to the bereaved individuals. community according to one or some combination of these two broad patterns. Overview Key Research Findings From time immemorial, humans have gathered in the face of death to ritualize the passage from life Funerals, as part of a wider interest in ceremony to death. First credited with coining the term, and ritual, have been widely studied in academic “rites of passage,” in the early twentieth century, and popular literature, especially since the begin- van Gennep (1960) studied tribal ceremonies to ning of the twentieth century but organized better understand how people groups utilize rit- methods for death rituals are found at least dating uals to express emotion following a community or to the Cerny (4600–4300 BCE) who buried their family member’s death. Anecdotally, traditional dead with grave goods such as arrowheads, pot- funeral practices are more widely embraced by tery, and shell jewelry (Thomas et al. 2011). The © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 D. Gu, M. E. Dupre (eds.), Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_1009-1 2 Funerals and Memorial Practices utilization of “gifts” to accompany the deceased is temporary preservation of their dead when they seen throughout history including trinkets placed saw the option employed in the war dead’s return in the coffin or cremation container of a contem- and the president’s funeral (Laderman 2003). porary deceased person or the libations poured In a few western societies, a minority of indi- into a grave before burial of a fallen military viduals have embraced the idea of returning comrade. funeral rituals to the hands of community and Van Gennep’s(1960) early work created a away from professionals; this can be seen in the three-part structure for understanding funeral rit- North American movement of providing care for uals: rituals of separation (preliminal), transition one’s own dead (Slocum and Carlson 2011). (liminal), and incorporation (postliminal). Rites of Fulton (1994) posited that the funeral is more separation provide mourners with an opportunity important than simply a means to dispose of the to say goodbye to the relationship, as previously corpse; its purpose extends to gathering the com- known, while the rites of transition reference the munity, providing a “socializing experience for “between and betwixt,” liminal time. Finally, van the participants, particularly the young ... [and] Gennep suggested, ritual carries the participant serves as an important vehicle of cultural trans- into a period of incorporation where the new mission,” (p. 309). roles and responsibilities are taken on, with rituals Memorial practices seem to serve at least four demarcating the new life that begins for mourners. purposes. Funerals make real the fact of the death. Malinowski (1948) declared that death creates Funeral rituals also provide stability in the chaos a paradox in which humans are both drawn to the of early loss. Community funeral rituals remind dead in an attempt to stay connected and repulsed mourners that in a real sense, the community has by the transformation that death brings to the been here before and knows the way through. body. Memorial practices, Malinowski believed, Whether it is the highly prescribed funeral ritual attempt to reconcile these two contradictory pur- of Roman Catholicism or the beating of a tribal poses of keeping the relationship alive while sev- drum on the African continent to notify the entire ering the physical bond. Geertz (1973)reflected village of a death, ritual gives order to the chaos. on Malinowski’s premise by suggesting that Pine (1972) wrote that funerals are more than “Mortuary rituals maintain the continuity of religious ceremonies and that their purposes human life by preventing the survivors from extend to helping community members cope yielding either to the impulse to flee panic- with their loss while dealing with the reality of stricken from the scene or to the contrary impulse their own future deaths. to follow the deceased into the grave” (p. 163). Third, funeral rituals help consolidate the leg- Communities employ various systems to care acy of the dead. In the face of a loved one’s death, for their dead. In many communities, deceased bereaved individuals tend to find in the deceased individuals are cared for by the family and com- person’s life one or more character qualities worth munity members as an act of filial devotion. In imitating, and those qualities become the values some societies, this familial-based care eventually talked about in the funeral eulogy, sermon, or gives way to a system of death care managed by remembrance speech. Tribute-speakers often use variously trained-and-certified professionals such stories and anecdotes to articulate the positive as funeral directors, the “ceremonial tender” of the values evidenced in the deceased’s life: compas- funeral (Pine 1972). In the United States, for sion, courage, respect, generosity, enthusiasm, example, this second era began in earnest with humor, positivity, warmth, politeness, peaceful- the popularization of arterial embalming in the ness, and heroism. Funeral rituals provide socially late nineteenth century making possible the return sanctioned places for mourners to honor the leg- of some military dead to their hometowns during acy of the deceased person. the American Civil War as well as the public Fourth, funeral rituals remind mourners of funeral rituals for President Abraham Lincoln. social continuation. The re-incorporative task of Many common citizens embraced the notion of rites of passage (van Gennep 1960/1908) remind Funerals and Memorial Practices 3 mourners that while death changes the landscape colleagues as a show of support even though the of relationships, the death – even of a community deceased was not known to the attendee. Also leader – does not end the social order. State present in communities around the world and funerals are thought to help provide psychological throughout history, Hoy identified the anchor of reassurance to citizens that their government is ritual action, demonstrating that grief includes safe and will be peacefully transferred to the behaviors as well as feelings. Rather than standing next administration. Funerals after the assassina- by as casual observers, many groups of mourners tions of world leaders such as the US President become actively involved in carrying out the John F. Kennedy in 1963, the Israeli Prime Min- duties of mourning and memorialization. ister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, and the former Paki- A fourth anchor is that of cultural heritage, stani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in 2007 are reminding observers that funerals and memorial examples of how the order of funeral rituals pro- gatherings are created within a cultural frame- vides psychological reassurance to citizens. work, often with ideas, rituals, and concepts Much recent scholarship has pointed to the handed down over many generations. The incens- efficacy of memorial practices for the healthy ing of the coffined body at a Roman Catholic integration of the loss experience and funerals funeral mass belongs to a traditional ritual hun- are viewed as positive in contemporary theories dreds of years old and that carries theological and and models of the bereavement process (Hoy emotional meaning for mourners. Presence of the 2013, 2016; Worden 2018). Romanoff and dead, the fifth anchor identified by Hoy seems has Terenzino (1998), for example, noted, “Rituals lost some prominence in recent North American can serve moderating, mediating, and connecting funeral rituals (Long 2009) even though this functions within the bereavement process, and seems to be a largely western, Caucasian thus facilitate intrapsychic transformation, the phenomenon. psychosocial status transition, and the continua- A mid-twentieth century movement by some to tion of communal and symbolic connections” (p. remove the corpse from the funeral and replace 697). that increasingly elaborate ritual with a simple Hoy (2013) articulated five attributes in funeral cremation and memorial service seemed at least rituals, indicating that in grounded theory research temporarily quelled when, as historian Gary with more than 135 people groups across the Laderman (2003) wrote the assassination

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