vendredi 8 mai 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.

Where the Philippines is concerned, funeral ceremonies in honour of a deceased, last from three to more than seven days. It is also common to have big numbers of visitors coming and staying for the entire ceremony. In Haiti, the family members have to take responsibility for most of the hands on planning for a funeral. This includes dressing and preparing the deceased body for the burial. Displays and expressions of grief are often set aside until every possession owned by the deceased leaves the 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.

For the traditional Bolivians customs, there are certain unique traits not seen elsewhere in the world. These include having entirely separate cremation ceremonies for the deceased clothes. This rite releases the soul of the departed deceased into the after world according to Bolivian believes.

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.

Incorporating religious or traditional customs is a way to personalize a funeral planning effort. In many cases, this ceremony assists families assent to the beliefs and wishes of the deceased. In efforts at adherence to honoured practices and rites, people often instruct their respective families about how to go about carrying out their funerals. Some incorporate these instructions within their wills.




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