Okay, so I think I’ve already exhausted all my holiday Fun
Facts options with Christmas,
Santa
Claus, Black
Friday and Weird
Christmas Traditions. I chose funerals on the advice of Sarah E. Melville because I really
needed an idea, but also because the holidays make me want to kill someone.
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| Which is why I avoid them. |
1) Human sacrifice was apparently pretty common in the
ancient world, especially in “less civilized” parts of it like everywhere
but Europe. The inhabitants of
pre-Christian Fiji believed that their souls, after death, would encounter
a demon named Nangga-Nangga who would ask them if they’d been married. If
they could prove that they had been, they would be allowed to move on to the
afterlife, but if they couldn’t, they would be turned away. A woman who died
would be buried with her husband’s beard in order to prove to the demon that
she had been married. A dead man, however, would need to be accompanied by the
ghost of his actual wife, who would be ritualistically strangled at the funeral
and placed in the grave.
But wait, it gets more complicated. The Fijians believed
that all spirits were the same age, and furthermore that the demon
Nangga-Nangga was kind of gullible, so, often, instead of strangling the dead
man’s wife, they would strangle his elderly mother or grandmother instead. She
would pose as his wife when they encountered the demon, and so they would both
journey into the afterlife together. This was considered more practical than
strangling a young, able-bodied widow, especially if some other man had his eye
on her. If this were the case, there might be a ritualistic fight between the
widow’s brother (or other close male relative) and the potential suitor, in
which it was common practice for the male relative to accept a bribe in order
to throw the fight.
If a man died while still a bachelor, and had no acceptable
female relatives to be ritually strangled on his behalf, his spirit would be
compelled to loiter around until a random woman died, so that he might implore her spirit to accompany him and pose as his wife in front of Nangga-Nangga.
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| This woman is not my grandmother. |
2) Some groups in southern China, the Philippines and Indonesia
use hanging
coffins, which are coffins that are carved from a single piece of wood and
suspended from a sheer cliff face. They’re balanced on natural projections in
the rock, hung from beams, or sometimes tucked into small caves. The practice
is said to keep animals from defiling the bodies of the dead, and to bring
blessings to the soul of the deceased.
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| ...and attract tourists. ~ Kok Leng, Maurice Yeo |
3) Beginning in the 17th century and lasting until
the dawn of the 20th century in Europe, people would hire “funeral
mutes” to stand around at the funeral, looking sad. The funeral mute served
as a symbolic champion of dead person, and usually took up a place near the
door of the church during the service.
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| Scary. |
4) In ancient times, and still
today in some cultures, professional mourners could be hired to weep, wail
and generally grieve excessively at people’s funerals.
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| As depicted on this stele. |
The practice was presumably intended to encourage others to express
their grief.
5) Some of you are probably aware that you can now be buried in space. Sadly,
they don’t just shoot your whole corpse into orbit, like they did
with Spock in The Wrath of Khan. No, they just stick a sample (a sample!)
of your cremains into a little tube and shoot that into orbit instead. Like,
they can’t even shoot your entire cremains into orbit. What a rip-off.
The company that does this, Celestis, offers several packages,
starting at the very reasonable price of $995. For $995, however, you have to
come back. If you want to stay in orbit, that costs five grand.
You can send up to seven grams of yourself to space, or
seven grams of yourself and seven grams of a loved one (costs triple). For
$12,500, they’ll send your dead ass to the Moon, or, if you prefer, straight off
into deep space.
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| Whee! |
