Death is a broad topic and it is really difficult for the human mind to be
able to grasp the whole truth about it. Until now, there are still ongoing
debates about the reality of death. Because of the limited knowledge that we
have about it, our behavior towards funeral services varies. The behavior,
rituals and other ceremonies during funeral vary for every country, tribe or
religion. Lots of aspects could be the source of the differences when it comes
to funeral customs. This knowledge about how things should be done during
funeral could have been due to their religion, the amount of knowledge when it
comes about death or different things related to death.
When you attend a funeral of a person who is a Buddhist and then attend a
funeral of a Catholic, surely, it is impossible not to enumerate several
differences on the way they treat the dead or the ceremonies they do during
funeral. Religion is one of the greatest aspects that give differences on how
people treat the dead. It is said to be the greatest aspect that affect a
personís belief about how funeral services should be done because religion deals
with the spiritual concept of a human being. Since death could be categorized as
the beginning of the spiritual journey of a person, different religions teaches
their followers on how they could help the dead personís spirit towards their
spiritual journey. Their teachings serve as guide on the things that a follower
is expected to do during funeral.
Aside from religion, the amount of knowledge that a person has about death is
also an aspect about their funeral customs. When people were not yet civilized,
they have a lot of fears because they do not understand what is happening in
their surroundings. One of the things that primitives used to have great fear is
death. Because they lack the knowledge that could have a deeper explanation why
things happen, they fear it and run away. This is the reason why primitives do
not give reverence for the dead and just let it rot. Some even allow the dead to
be consumed by vultures. They fear that evil spirits caused death and so instead
of giving a decent burial for their dead relatives, they run away. Now that we
are more knowledgeable about death, our funeral customs also evolved. We no
longer run away from the dead but give them a sacred ceremony depending on the
religion that we are in.
Aside from knowledge about death and religion, there are some people who would
disregard these and still follow the old practices done by their ancestors. Some
even defend that it would not hurt to follow the practices since they grew up
knowing and seeing their elders follow the same things. When we attend a funeral
from one province to another, even if they practice the same religion, there are
still chances that the funeral customs are different. This could be due to
superstitions being practiced by the local residents of the area. This is just
one proof that no matter how civilized we are, there are still chances that we
believe the things that our forefathers believe in.
Even if we live in the same generation, differences about funeral customs are
still present. While our generation is constantly evolving towards being high
tech, there are still a lot of topics, like death, that are not fully uncovered.
Even if there are different practices during funeral services, there is one
thing in common why people do these funeral customs: it is to help the soul of
the dead person in finding eternity.
Read more about Funeral Etiquette.