Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Folklore Anthropology 2006 Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living Jacqueline S. Thursby Brigham Young University Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Thursby, Jacqueline S., "Funeral Festivals in America: Rituals for the Living" (2006). Folklore. 2. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_folklore/2 Funeral Festivals in America Material Worlds Simon J. Bronner, Series Editor Designing the Centennial: A History of the 1876 International Exhibition in Philadelphia by Bruno Giberti Culinary Tourism edited by Lucy M. Long Funeral Festivals in America Rituals for the Living Jacqueline S. Thursby TilE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Copyright © 2006 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2009 The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9299-4 (pbk: acid-free paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses To GRACE, RuTH, AND HELEN for your friendship in life and dignity in death. "And Tom brought him chicken soup until he wanted to kill him. The lore has not died out of the world, and you will still find people who believe that soup will cure any hurt or illness and is no bad thing to have for the funeral either." john Steinbeck, East of Eden , Contents Acknowledgments viii Prologue 1 ONE Funerals as Festivals 30 Two The Final Passage 44 THREE Wakes and Other Amusements 59 FouR Funeral Biscuits and Funeral Feasts 79 FIVE Mourners' Rites 116 SIX Explaining the Festival and the American Way of Death 126 Epilogue 134 Notes 142 References 146 Index 155 Acknowledgments Many colleagues, friends, and generous family members have shared their experiences and suggestions for this text. First, Simon Bronner, folklorist, has answered questions and has provided consistent support during the daunting textual construction and reconstruction of the work. From its original categorical arrangement to its present thematic format, he, and Joyce Harrison, editor, have encouraged me. Lauren Gillespie, my able research assistant, and Anthony Dunster, a Brigham Young University computer-lab guru, helped me to accomplish the task in a timely manner. Last, my husband, Denny, has served as friend, valuable critic, and one of those stalwart friends "who only stand and wait," for the last few years while I have worked. Thank you all. Prologue Contemporary American funerals often assume the character and roles of festival. That presents a paradox in conflict with traditional perceptions of ritual behaviors associated with death. Human beings characteristically invent and reinvent traditional folklife to suit their contemporary needs. With changes over time in cultural attitudes and behaviors, familiar traditional customs become intertwined with newly discovered or created practices, and new modes emerge.1 The American character commonly adapts old ways to new, and the Unit ed States, a complex civilization made up of its own indigenous peo ple and multitudes of cultures from around the world, has reinvented the response to death. Rather than a space of time with emphasis on separation, death and the funerary rituals surrounding it have become a place for renewal and reaffirmed connectedness between family and friends of the deceased. Research using the folkloristic2 lens loans itself to synthesizing material from various academic disciplines. Examining oral, materi al, customary, and belief systems as applied to both traditional and newly invented funerary ritual opens to examination a broad range of cultural responses. Ritual practices discussed range from clothing to foods to epitaphs. To illuminate the subject of contemporary Amer ican funerary rituals and practices, I have selected some comparative examples to draw out the variety of cultural responses (both folk and commercial) using America as a laboratory for diversity and at the same time, standardization. 1 2 Funeral Festivals in America The following discussion represents both my objective and sub jective perspectives because I have loved, celebrated, and accepted the passing of many beautiful lives; I have mourned, reflected, and come to understand how tenuous and fleeting life is in spite of the sense of invulnerability most of us seem to have. When Evelyn Waugh wrote The Loved One (1948) as a satire of the elaborate preparations and memorialization of the dead taking place in his time, he had no way of knowing how extraordinarily cre ative and technical human funerary practice would become. Human remains and cremains are now commonly scattered, buried simply or elaborately, preserved in methods that may be as complex (or more so) than the ancient Egyptian mummification techniques, or even launched into orbit. In my personal experience, I have not seen "a chintz sofa ... [with] what seemed to be the wax effigy of an elderly woman dressed as though for an evening party" (Waugh 1999: 49), but I have seen Web sites with videos and pictures of the deceased, tombstones and crypts with embedded tape recordings of music, and pneumatically etched portraits on cemetery markers so lifelike that one might imagine that the replicated eyes are following the viewer's movement. Waugh would have enjoyed The Young and the Dead, an HBO film about the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which tells the story of what owner and director Tyler Cassidy has done with this cemetery to revive and restore dignity, memory, and connectedness in the ongoing relationship between bereaved survivors and deceased loved ones. Grave sites from antiquity give evidence of the general human be lief in survival after death. It is commonly known that Egyptian and Chinese (and other) tombs contained artifacts, including foods, to as sist the dead in the afterworld. Fossilized imprints throughout the world, from Turkey to South America, have enabled anthropologists and other scholars to discern that the ancient dead were buried with flowers, indicating that death may have been perceived as a celebra tory occasion. Both ancient and contemporary belief systems teach followers of a form of life beyond the grave, and there are always sto ries circulating about near-death experiences or even spirits who re turn with occasional messages. How the dead are treated is a hallmark Prologue 3 of civilization, and for eons, evidence suggests that they were usually treated with some measure of honor and respect. My folkloric and cultural research situates this contemporary mourning, funerary, and food study in the realm of celebration and festival, and it will present further evidence for that placement. My research has included wide participant observation. Much of the fol lowing discussion and interpretation is consequent to my personal interaction with various religious denominations practiced in the United States. I also taught "Religions in America" at Bowling Green State University, and I have attended Latter-day Saint, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Jewish, Buddhist, and Hindu re ligious services and funerals. In each of those settings, I have been warmly welcomed, and though I have asked many questions and was given materials to read, I have been constantly honored by being in vited to return. Feasting and the ubiquitous presence and importance of food in relation to death and mourning convince me that ritual fu neral behaviors are folk expressions for the living. It is difficult, if not impossible, to enjoy a good meal and company when one is sad, and post-funeral meals, usually sumptuous and comforting, are no excep tion. The great critic and scholar Mikhail Bakhtin stated that "Sad ness and food are incompatible .... The banquet always celebrates a victory and this is part of its very nature."3 The funerary banquet cel ebrates a life, often well lived, and the victory is in overcoming and accepting the change that death brings; honoring a loved one at death becomes victorious because it renews the living. This study also reveals diminished boundaries that the acknowl edgment and celebration of death create between varied members of our social, cultural, and ethnic strata. There are pinnacle moments of harmony that occur when common human emotion responds with wisdom and dignity to meaningful, tender, and life-impacting rites of passage. Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, Jacques Derrida, and Peter Narvaez and others have furnished our scholarship with sensi tive and profound insights concerning death and belief. In this dis cussion of American life and its response to death, we will see that Americans question, mourn, and then celebrate with ongoing, forward looking confidence in the continued joy of life. We live in a different 4 Funeral Festivals in America time now than when some of these scholars conducted their research and coined their theories. We live in a world connected by technology and diminished in vastness to what Marshall McLuhan called a global sized village.