From kissing the corps and placing coins on the eyes to tying the big toes together. What are some of the strangest funeral practices you know of and why are they done?
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The first duty was to close and secure the eyes and mouth of the corpse, after it was absolutely certain death had occurred. The body then was washed with warm water (cf. Acts 9:37). This custom, called the “Purification of the dead,” still prevails among the Jews.
he nails and hair were trimmed, and the body was anointed with ointment in preparation for burial (cf. Mt. 26:12; Lk. 23:56; Jn. 19:39).
This isn't really a funeral practice but still....in Papau New Guinea, people of some highland tribes didn't bury their dead, they preserved them by smoking their corpses and installing them in specially built huts around the family home.. A normal family might have several huts nearby containing the smoked cadavers of parents and relatives. It was pointed out that it helped maintain family histories and apparently it was just nice to see the children visit and play with their grandparents and take them on walks.
In Japan I saw Buddhist monks who'd mummified themselves. They'd eat and drink less and less until they died, leaving their bodies totally desiccated. I don't know if they got to heaven though.
Are you an ex-reformed Christian?
@v a p o r w a v e: Are you an ex-reformed Christian?
No. I was a nominal Anglican (C of E), but I never really took it seriously. I've been atheist for over 50 years. Now I see religion as similar to smoking--something that weak-minded people are compelled to do even though it harms themselves and everyone around them, while impoverishing them and enriching the peddlers.
Why? Are you an ex-reformed Christian?
Yes, that flower was closely related to Martin Luther of the protestant reformation.
@v a p o r w a v e: Yes, that flower was closely related to Martin Luther of the protestant reformation.
Luther's rose has a red center with a black cross in it. The design in my avatar is the white rose of York and the emblem of Yorkshire, where I was born.
Well that shows how much I know. Thanks for the clarification.
The Fore people, a once-isolated tribe in eastern Papua New Guinea, had a long-standing tradition of mortuary feasts — eating the dead from their own community at funerals. Men consumed the flesh of their deceased relatives, while women and children ate the brain
@Cog
Gives a whole new meaning to, "Let's have grandma over for dinner."
Just about all the death rituals come off as highly strange when looked at from an outside perspective.
The only "ritual" that makes any sense to me is burying the dead, as that helps cut down on disease and smell.
- Burn the dead? (Especially the old style before crematoriums that attempted to sequester the more harmful emissions?) Yeah.. lets breath into our sensitive lungs bits and pieces of our old possibly diseased dead people? (We perhaps rightly so avoid human waste excrement, but are okay with the same excrement being aerosolized along with all the other aging and perhaps other diseased body parts and breathe it in? While on the subject of cremation, we burn them super hot then keep the carbon ash remains in a jar to remember them by? Huh?
- Standing on a grave is bad and disrespectful to the dead. No it isn't, nothing is disrespectful to the dead person they cannot perceive or process any action. Perhaps for living relatives/friends it is disrespectful if they decide they are sensitive to it, but if they are not alerted to the action was any disrespect had? Even more sacrilegious? Disturbing a grave, uh, the person is dead they do not care if they get moved or if their remains get jostled or seperated some more.
- Wooden or other base material boxes for the dead, especially expensive nicely crafted and polished ones, its going in the ground, no one is going to see it after funeral day. If you want a nice container for the dead for the final resting place rituals that is fine to pretend you are fancier and richer than other people, but just borrow the 5000 dollar+ box and let dirt and the earth do what is going to do eventually anyways. Unless you actually suspect you need to exhume the body for investigation reasons some time in the near future, which should be exceedingly rare scenario.
- Egyptians and their giant pyramids plus mummification process - 'nuff said. Would almost make sense if they wanted to preserve the bodies for display, but great effort instead is made to seal them in shut with no possible visitation (and no looting, which still happened anyways many years later!)
- Burying people with expensive material objects, jewelry etc. Uh yeah, lets just waste money on something that the dead person most certainly assigns no value to anymore. Even if one believes in some sort of afterlife, almost universally everyone agrees you cannot take material possessions "with you" into this afterlife. So these materials instead just rot in the ground. Maybe later looted by people that realize it is a completely victimless crime to loot graves. Heck people can even wait until 20 years after the fact, there is plenty of bodies in the ground to choose from.
I could go on if anyone is interested :)
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I live in Korea and I didn't know this one: "Burial beads: Turn the dead into colourful beads." Many people in South Korea opt to compress the remains of the dead person into gem-like beads in different colors which are then displayed in small vile or jars at home.
@Cognostic: compress the remains of the dead person into gem-like beads
You think that's odd? An undertaker in Queensland, Australia offered to turn my mother into a picture frame by mixing her ashes with colored plastic.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ...... It's Original.... there is a market out there somewhere.
I heard/saw somewhere, probably on the History Channel, that Haitian/equatorial/caribbean people would put bricks or large stones in the mouths of the deceased so that the remains would not rise again as the living dead. Don't know if that would help them get into heaven but it sure sounds creepy. PG.
A custom I read about recently: When somebody dies their back is broken ... to try to prevent them becoming a "zombie". The body is then left until the flesh has gone, leaving just bones. The whole community, including the infants, then gather round the bones and break them up into little pieces ... then the pieces are ground into dust ... so as to ensure they don't become a zombie.
So folks, if you're worried that when you die you might become a zombie and scare your family and neighbours you now know what you need to arrange before you snuff it. You could make it a condition of your will that nobody gets anything until your remains are disposed of in the above manner.
Nowadays there's no need to wait for the body to rot ... just drop it into a bath of caustic soda. In a few hours there'll just be your bones left ... and your family and neighbours can then get busy reducing you to a pile of dust.
This thread is about weird funeral practices, isn't it?
@SC007
That one actually sounds like it would be fun! lol I call dibs on the ribs!
I am like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Since I have consumed all the energy for my body, when I die, I want my body to return to the cycle by allowing all the plants and what-not to dine on the energy I have inside my body.
He puts so much more eloquently, but that is my feelings in a nutshell. Since I have dined on others, then let them dine on me.
rmfr
The problem with that, at least in the U.S., is all the restrictive laws about burial that make it nearly (if not totally) impossible for the ‘what-not’ to take advantage of the free meal.
Yeah, but there is that place called the "corpse ranch" where you can donate your body so they can have decomposing bodies to study for forensic science, especially for criminology. Let me look it up...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Tennessee_Anthropological_Research_Facility
Perfect place for the energy I have consumed from others for others to reclaim from me once I am dead...
rmfr
I’ve decided to let the local medical school have my carcass. Let students hack it up and learn so they can help the living.
Now that is the way to think. Being helpful, even in death.
rmfr
CyberLN,
"I’ve decided to let the local medical school have my carcass. Let students hack it up and learn so they can help the living."
You should sell your corpse to a body broker before you die. That way you can have a party before you croak. A properly parted out corpse can be worth over $100,000.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodies-export/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-bodies-brokers/
https://psmag.com/magazine/arms-dealers
Here in the US you can have your cremains mixed with concrete and then formed into Eternal Reefs. These are small, hollow structures that are then submerged on the ocean floor, off Florida or someplace, that are then colonized by marine life, fish etc., to help diversify and enrich the habitat.
Typical inscriptions include, "I'm only here for the shrimp," etc.
If I had that done and my wife were still alive, she'd have the inscription, "I ain't here to catch any fish, just relax." put on mine. Nine out of ten times I went fishing, I did so just to relax, not catch anything. Yet, I would always seem to catch something.
rmfr
I think I am just opting for cremation. Here today, smoke and ash tomorrow.
Now you can have your loved one's ashes sealed in a sex toy. The 21 Grams Vibrator (so-named because the human soul weighs 21 grams) contains a mini-urn.
https://geekologie.com/2015/04/still-getting-intimate-having-your-loved.php
Rest in peace, or no peace for the wicked?
@Algebe Re: Sex toy
HO-LY SHIT!... That is hilarious! But at the same time.... Absolute GENIUS!
What He Said ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
rmfr
It might just provide more satisfaction that was gotten when the person was alive....
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