I’ve attended 4 funerals during which we’ve buried close family members (Eastern Europe; Hungary), nevertheless never have I witnessed an opened casket funeral. The priest would give the last rites and the coffins would be descended into the grave.
Via pop-cultural osmosis I keep getting the idea that in the US open casket funerals are pretty much a must and some people would have to walk next to the casket and pay their respects.
Are young children forced to confront their grand parent’s coffins to show respect?
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The only funerals I’ve been to have been for people who got cremated, so no casket at all.
Pretty common down here in the south.
I’ve been to a lot and I think it’s morbid and unnecessary but for some it’s just part of the process. There’s no denying there’s a dead person in the room so maybe that helps with acceptance. It’s uncomfortable at first but becomes less uncomfortable the longer you’re there with them. Kids aren’t usually forced to go up but often they do with family members. These types of funerals are usually the longest and I dread them the most.
Of all the funerals I’ve been to I’d say probably about a 1/3 were open casket.
Yes, it varies but it is not at all unusual. I can think of four or five I’ve been to, including my brother’s.
P.S. I also observed his cremation, so not even a casket in that situation. He was on like a big cardboard tray. I wasn’t going to do it at first but I changed my mind and have no regrets. I was the only one there from our family so I had one last private moment with him. It was a little surreal but it was all right.
In my family quite common.
It depends on your family. Cremation is starting to get more common than earth burials so the chance of an open casket funeral is going down.
Also a lot of families have a wake of a viewing with an open casket but the actual church service and burial are closed casket.
Other families have the casket open at the church.
In my experience, maybe half the funerals I’ve attended were open casket. Although the open casket is generally held during the “viewing time” or the “wake” that precedes the actual funeral ceremony. Sometimes it’s open during the funeral and is closed during the ceremony. There are a lot of different beliefs and ideas.
Whether a child is “forced” to “confront” grandpa’s corpse says more about the parents or family members themselves, there’s no widespread cultural demand that a 7 year old perform that ritual.
They’re the more common option where I am in the Midwest. It’s often assumed something especially tragic happened if there is a closed casket, even! I don’t know much about Hungary but I do know that our burial laws are quite different from many other Central European countries. My understanding is that we require far more embalming and preserving of the body than y’all do, which is probably the true reason open caskets aren’t done in your country. Without all those extra chemicals, the remains look *far* more upsetting. If a funeral home has a talented enough mortician they’ll usually look pretty “normal,” almost as if they’re just sleeping.
In my family all the funerals I’ve attended have been open casket. Usually there is a service at a funeral home, then a procession to the graveyard (by car), and finally a smaller service with a few final statements at the gravesite where the casket is lowered into the ground.
It depends on the religion and culture. Jewish funerals are always closed casket. I’ve never been to an open-casket funeral, but it’s my understanding that it is common for Christain funerals (maybe 50% ?).
I have been to many open casket funerals. It’s really up to the deceased person’s and the family’s wishes. I personally hate it.
Raised Catholic and open casket funerals were very common when I was young in the 80s. But there seems to be a shift happening and the family funerals in the past 20 years have mostly been closed casket or cremation.
Every funeral I’ve been to over 30 years has been open casket, so in my experience, very common.
Depends on the region, culture, religion, and family. In Louisiana, almost all are two- or three-part funerals with an open casket for the wake, open for the indoor part of the funeral, and closed for the graveside service. Then you’re supposed to go to the most senior surviving loved one’s home and mull around for a bit, but you should also bring a gift card or casserole for the family. Under no circumstances should this be gifted in a container you want back, because washing and returning eleventy casserole dishes all over the county is not happening.
In New Orleans, there may also be a Second Line, which is a walking procession with a jazz band where the attending all dance and sing while following the casket to the graveside. Parasols and white handkerchiefs are thus necessary to have on hand for funerals there, so you have something to wave during the procession. These days, that tends to be part of the memorial gathering at the home, but originally it was done on the way to the grave and the mourners split into 2+ groups to go in opposite directions, thus fooling and malevolent spirits that may be following the casket to steal the deceased. We also bury our dead in raised graves or a vault in a large mausoleum, as the water table in south La is about 5″ below the surface of the ground. When the water rises, so does grandma if you insisted on an in-ground burial, and absolutely no one wants to drag her casket six miles back to the graveyard post-hurricane. They need to just make in-ground burial illegal south of Baton Rouge.
For traditional Jewish funerals in that area, there is an unofficial kind of rotating schedule of nonjews who visit the mourning home and handle groceries, minor cleaning, some cooking, and just general small tasks around the house so that the family can focus on mourning. They appreciate the chance to actually mourn for the full prescribed timeline, and it would be a beautiful thing if everyone were able to have several days with their friends actually coming by and making sure they are eating and brushing their hair and the house isn’t dark and dusty. Firsthand, it appears to result in *much* lower rates of complicated grief.
I worked hospice for a long time, and I’ve been honored to take part in death traditions from cultures all over the world. I will say that the fewer generations a family has spent here, the less likely an American open-casket funeral is. I prefer that, personally, and I plan to leave explicit instructions to leave my shit shut when I go. It’s weird, they look asleep but uncanny, 0/5 stars. From someone who has attended a great many death calls and funerals, team closed casket. The rest of the traditions are survivor-focused and serve important communal functions, but the open casket thing is weird and uncomfortable.
Really good question! I look forward to seeing answers from different regions. Looks like you’ve got Gulf Coast southerners, the Midwest, and the Northeast all represented here so far. I do wonder about Hawai’i, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. All very different cultures from us down in mosquitoville, and dealing with totally different geographical issues that would impact their death traditions.
I’ve never been to one. Most of the services I’ve been to were for people who were cremated and so more of a “celebration of life” situation.
At most I’ve attended, the visitation has been open casket and the actual service has been closed.
Approaching the casket has always been voluntary in my experience. Anyone who finds it too emotional or just isn’t comfortable with it stays in another part of the room.
I’ve only ever been to one, a friend who died young. But almost all the others I’ve been to have been Jewish, where it’s never done.
I think it’s about 50/50 of the funerals that I’ve been to. As for the part about young children being forced to, in your words, “confront their grandparent’s coffin to show respect” when I was 4 years old my paternal grandfather passed away, I went to what was called the viewing the day before the actual funeral. However my parents left my infant brother and I in the care of a family friend during the funeral.
Also in my experience it is not the family of the person that died that walks past the coffin it is non family people that attended the funeral that do this. You show respect by passing by the casket and then speak to family members of the deceased that you know personally and/or to the immediate family of the deceased offering condolences.
Open-casket is very common, although in my area more and more people are opting for cremation. It is my understanding that embalming is less common in other countries, so that may have something to do with the prevalence of open-caskets here. In the US, embalming is standard practice.
Most Jews don’t have open caskets for burials. It depends on your culture.
I don’t know Muslim customs. Christians in general do open casket. If the body is too mangled though, you do closed casket.
I’m sure there are sadistic parents who force their small children to ‘kiss Grandpa goodbye,” but most people allow their children to make their own choices.
Even in an open casket service, there are almost always people who don’t go up to view the body. Nobody cares. These are often people with mobility issues, people who barely knew the person, people who were extremely close and can’t handle it, and children.
When my nephew died, my 5-year-old wanted to go up but my 10-year-old did not. 10 years later, neither is traumatized by their decision.
One of the eeriest for me was a baby’s funeral. I job-shared with another teacher when we were both pregnant. I was out on maternity leave so her baby was in daycare and died there. They had the casket made to look like a bassinet and he just looked like he was sleeping. We taught preschool and Kindergarten, and many of our students came to the service. It was really beautiful but just uncomfortable for me.
Very in the black community
Yes. It’s especially common in Catholic funerals here.
I went to my great grandpa’s funeral when I was 13 and it was open casket. I wasn’t forced to go up to him but I chose to.
Same for my grandfather and grandmother.
My wife’s family did not have an open casket for her grandfather.
Death traditions are very personalized to specific subcultures. The US has a lot of different subcultures because of all the people who come here from different places around the world.
That said, I would venture to say that for the segment of our population that we refer to as WASPs (white, Anglo Saxon, protestant) which tends to get the most pop culture coverage, it’s pretty normal. And yes, children will file by their grandparent’s casket. It’s considered a chance to say your last goodbyes, but it isn’t mandatory if you’re really uncomfortable. But because of that “last chance” feeling, most people do.
There are caveats and exceptions, though. In the US, embalming has been a big deal since the Civil War in the mid 1800s. So our bodies tend to be kept fairly “fresh” until the funeral. This is something that might be different where you are. We also reserve open casket funerals for when the body can be shown in good condition. If the person died in a way where the body was heavily damaged, they don’t do an open casket funeral.
Other segments of the population might have traditions that involve other preparations of the body. Or the individual might have specified in life that they want something else done. For instance I want my body composted but that’s not really legal everywhere yet so we’ll see how that situation develops.
Ultimately death traditions are a very deep well for discussion in any culture. Everyone will have their own feelings about what is respectful and appropriate, and that can vary wildly from one culture to another. I just took a 1 semester class on the subject in college and that barely scratched the surface. No way to give it the attention it deserves in a reddit comment.
I don’t know how common they are, the three funerals I have been to were open casket, two grandparents and a classmate. The only one that felt forced was having to walk by my classmate. I remember my grandparent’s as well but I was not forced to show respect or anything, I saw them from a distance.
All other services I have been to have been memorials.
All the ones I have been to have been open casket. For us it’s a way to have our final goodbyes. There is touching, kissing, and looking at the body just to get their physical visage in our mind and memory one last time on this earth. I do it simply because the person lying there is someone I have loved and love more than being unnerved about the fact that they have passed.
Nobody is forced to go up for whatever reasons they may have. It’s up to the individual.