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Funerals And Death Rituals In American Culture

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Funerals are a dark, gloomy, and sometimes emotional subject for many people. Death rituals like funerals are times where we as a community come together to mourn someone’s loss; it is depressing and often turbulent. But we often overlook the positive aspects of events like these in favor of their negative ones. We can’t ignore the grief that comes with funerals and loss, but we can investigate how funerals are beneficial to those trying to cope with bereavement. In fact, funerals and death rites have many psychological benefits. This is pervasive to grief rituals no matter the culture or the time period: for example, the people of Ancient Greece and the people of modern-day America. As humans, it is in our nature to perform rituals on …show more content…

In Ancient Greece, for example, there were two main practices for dealing with loss: tombstones and lamentation. The earliest Greek tombstones found dated back to the Hellenistic period (323-31 BCE). They were mildly expensive, and as such most belonged to the middle class. Emotional expressions on the stones were evident through the use of elements of personal significance to the deceased. These ‘emotional expressions’ were most commonly found on children’s graves, and in the form of things like short biographical inscriptions or depictions of their favorite toys (Melin). Lamentation was the central death ritual in the world of Ancient Greece. The earliest evidence of it was in the Mycenaean period (1600-1100 BCE), on painted sarcophagi and clay figurines. A lament was without exception done by a woman, either a professional lamentress or a close relative of the deceased. It was considered an art form, a mixture of an improvised theater performance and a song, and addressed both the dead and the living (Stevanovic). In addition to the performer being considered an artist, she was also considered to have the role of a witch or a shaman because of how she acted as an intermediary between worlds. Emotional intensity was always present in a lament, the performer going so far as to mutilate herself by scratching and beating herself (Sijakovic). Furthermore, because women had such a powerful role in the Ancient Greece grieving process, they had a certain power over death. It was for this reason that in the sixth century, laws were passed against lamentation in some city states, like the Solonian Laws. The laws were not really about the lamentation, but more about suppressing women because many were fearful of the power they seemed to hold (Sijakovic,

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