Introduction
Funeral refers to ceremony that is held in order to celebrate, sanctify, respect, or even remember the life of a dead person. After interviewing a male individual who was over seventy years old about funerals, the answers given is discussed below.
The first question asked was on how the funerals look like in the past. He said that over the past seventy years, funerals were being conducted at home, and the only external assistance the family received and needed most was only in supplying the coffin used to keep the corpse. He further stated that since the coffin was made out of wood, it was being bought at the store that were also used to sale furniture and some people also built their own, provided they have talent and time (Taylor n. pag.).
The second question was on how the funerals have changed over the past forty or fifty years. He mentioned that funeral service, for instance, has drastically changed over the past forty years, with the highest dramatic changes on the horizon. According to him, until the beginning of nineteenth century, the responsibility of preparing the corpse for burial was usually done by the family whereby a local woodworker or carpenter would be requested to make a coffin. Gradually, these carpenters were called upon to transport the coffin to the church and then to the cemetery for burial. The caskets later become more ornate, while the carpenter acquired a fancier wagon as well as a dark colored team of horses. Therefore, the carpenter was transformed from being a cabinet-maker to be an undertaker. Today, it is a highly sought after and also a highly skilled career that attracts both women and men with the passion of serving others (Taylor n. pag.).
However, I would like to suggest that because there is an increase in the number of deaths all over the world, cremation should be encouraged as the best method to bury the dead simply because cemetery is now becoming over-congested with graves, and no more space is available to accommodate more corpses. This process would include the normal funeral celebration, and then, instead of burying the corpse in the soil, they are cremated.
Works cited
Taylor, Ryan. Before there were Funeral Homes, there were Furniture Stores. Globalgenealogy.com, 15 April 1999. Web. 22 Nov. 2013.
