Signs of the times – undertakers as event managers

Funerary customs are on the move in Germany, which seems to be emerging as the country to watch at the moment.

Undertakers are becoming a little like event managers. People who are not religious and don’t go to church expect undertakers to organize a ritual for the funeral.

In recent years the culture of mourning has changed in Germany. Funerals have become more personal, often more colourful.

‘As private business people, funeral directors are usually better able to cater for individual needs. A priest, on the other hand, is confined to certain structures,’ says Alexander Helbach, spokesman for the consumer funeral watchdog association in Germany. Helbach believes morticians are profiting from the change in attitudes by extending their services into organizing funeral orators or funeral halls for families of the dead.

As German undertakers move to meet consumer expectations by extending their service into ceremony-making, we note that most British undertakers have been very slow to exploit the opportunity.

Following recent discussion on this blog about who is responsible if a grave is dug too small, it is delightful to note that Germans, noted for thoroughness in all things, train their undertakers to cope with all contingencies:

In the central German town of Munnerstadt there is even a special graveyard where young morticians can practice burials – the only one of its kind in Europe. 

Read the whole article here

Death Row

On Texas’s death row, there are no contact visits at all– no hand-holding, no embraces.

There is a strange little ritual when a Texas prisoner who still has family and friends is executed: his or her loved ones rush to the Huntsville funeral home which holds the contract with the prison, to touch the dead body while warmth remains in it. Normally, it will have been over five years since it was possible to touch the prisoner at all.

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Back to business after the ‘blitz’

Posted by Richard Rawlinson

It may be the 300th anniversary of the completion of Sir Christopher Wren’s St Paul’s Cathedral but 2011 will be remembered as the year the great building closed to the public for the first time since the Blitz due to health and safety fears after anti-capitalist protesters set up camp on its doorstep.

I’m not sure how many funeral plans were put on ice due to the protesters but, as the nation’s church, St Paul’s has been a focal point for the remembrance of the departed, both famous and anonymous.

Margaret Thatcher is to receive the accolade of a State funeral at St Paul’s when she reaches the end of her days – the first Prime Minister since Sir Winston Churchill to be afforded such an honour. In 1965, the dramatic images of Churchill’s coffin, draped in the Union Jack, were broadcast to millions around the globe.

There have also been services marking the contributions made by ordinary men and women involved in conflicts in the Falklands, the Gulf and Northern Ireland. On another occasion, a large crowd gathered following the terrorist attacks on New York on 11 September 2001, as London expressed its solidarity at a time of grief. At the service of remembrance following the terrorist bombings in London in July 2005, young people representing different faith communities lit candles as a shared sign of hope.

Over 90 years after the opening of Wren’s new cathedral, it hosted the funeral service of Admiral Lord Nelson in 1806. After his death at the Battle of Trafalgar, his body was preserved in a keg of naval brandy before burial in the Crypt. His final resting place is immediately under the centre of the Dome of St Paul’s.

In 1852, a million people watched the Duke of Wellington’s funeral procession to St Paul’s. The building was closed for almost six weeks while extra tiers of seating and grandstands were erected in the aisles and transepts in preparation for the 13,000 attending.

Imagine the uproar if the building was closed for any length of time to prepare for Maggie’s send off.

The Good Funeral Guide
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