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May 2 - May 17, 2021
That attitude—revulsion at the way other groups handle their dead—has endured through millennia. If
Since religion is the source of many death rituals, often we invoke belief to denigrate the practices of others.
We need to reform our funeral industry, introducing new practices that aren’t so profit-oriented, and that do more to include the family.
we have fallen behind the rest of the world when it comes to proximity, intimacy, and ritual around death.
(for the first time, in 2017, more Americans will be cremated than buried).
very private, family-centered festival that is Días de los Muertos—the two days at the beginning of November when the dead are said to return to indulge in the pleasures of the living.
festival also came to represent the struggles of many disenfranchised political groups. These groups adopted Días de los Muertos to mourn for those kept from the public eye, including sex workers, indigenous and gay rights groups, and Mexicans who had died trying to cross the border to the U.S. In the last forty years, Días de los Muertos has come to represent popular culture, tourist culture, and protest culture throughout Mexico. And Mexico itself is viewed as a world leader in practicing engaged, public grief.
MEXICAN POET Octavio Paz famously said that while citizens of Western cities like New York, Paris, and London would “burn their lips” if they so much as uttered the word “death,” “the Mexican, on the other hand, frequents it, mocks it, caresses it, sleeps with it, entertains it; it is one of his favorite playthings and his most enduring love.”
The funeral system in the United States is notorious for passing laws and regulations interfering with diverse death practices and enforcing assimilation toward Americanized norms.
Attempts were made over the ensuing centuries to eradicate the practices, which were “above all, horrifying to the illustrious elite, who sought to expel death from social life.”
“I think most mothers have at least some fear of being imprisoned by the birth of a child,”
The cultural meaning of suicide in Japan is different. It’s viewed as a selfless, even honorable act.
Japanese do. They have a cremation rate of 99.9 percent—the highest in the world. No other country even comes close (sorry, Taiwan: 93 percent; and Switzerland: 85 percent).
because quickly taking the body away “does not offer sufficient time for the bereaved to contemplate death.”
Santa Muerte, the Mexican Saint of Death,
At almost any location in any major city on Earth, you are likely standing on thousands of bodies.
