Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum. Here you know the image of a standard American,
Speaker 1: usually Christian funeral. It takes place at a funeral home
Speaker 1: with attendees dressed all in black. An open casket with
Speaker 1: an embalmed body rests in front of the crowd. After
Speaker 1: the service, a hearst takes the casket to a cemetery
Speaker 1: for burial. This was a conventional funeral in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: but this sort of send off of the dead has
Speaker 1: undergone adjustments over the decades. We spoke Gary Ladderman, chair
Speaker 1: of Emory University's Department of Religion and author of two
Speaker 1: books on death. He said that perhaps the most significant
Speaker 1: change is the rising popularity of cremation. Some religious beliefs
Speaker 1: have long worked to convince people of the importance of
Speaker 1: physically preserving loved ones, and it was more profitable for
Speaker 1: the funeral industry too, so burial remained prevalent. Latterman pointed
Speaker 1: to the psychology of it too. He said, it's historically
Speaker 1: rooted in American culture. That is, the idea that we
Speaker 1: can preserve the body. That's an important concept and how
Speaker 1: we respond to and think about death. But the idea
Speaker 1: of preserving the body started changing with the publication of
Speaker 1: a seminal book, Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death,
Speaker 1: a nineteen sixty three best selling expose a of how
Speaker 1: some members of the U. S. Funeral home industry were
Speaker 1: fleecing mourners. Creation provided alternative ideas to consumers. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, the cremation rate was only three but today
Speaker 1: Creation's outpaced burials, if only slightly. As of seen, according
Speaker 1: to the Cremation Association of North America, the US cremation
Speaker 1: rate was fifty one point six percent. By two the
Speaker 1: rate is projected to jump by more than six percentage points.
Speaker 1: Cremation has raised questions about the importance of the body
Speaker 1: and its role in funerals. Lattiman said, clearly the idea
Speaker 1: that somehow the body needs to be preserved for all
Speaker 1: time and a casket intervolt no longer holds. We have
Speaker 1: different ideas about symbolic religious meanings of the body, but
Speaker 1: Midford's expos a isn't the only reason for changing funeral norms.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties were a time of cultural upheaval,
Speaker 1: which extended to analyzing accepted death customs. Ladderman said it's
Speaker 1: also in tandem with the whole spirit of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: challenging authority, new forms of spirituality, new ways of thinking
Speaker 1: about the afterlife. All these things, in addition to the politics,
Speaker 1: that too, contributes to a major shift in people's thinking
Speaker 1: about death, how they experienced death, and what they do
Speaker 1: with a corpse. Also, consumer culture has shifted since the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, allowing people more opportunities for customization. According to Taste,
Speaker 1: you might recognize this in the myriad ways funerals have
Speaker 1: gotten personalized requests for mourners to wear non black clothing,
Speaker 1: music liked by the deceased playing at the funeral, or
Speaker 1: tombstones they pay homage to the person's hobbies. These days
Speaker 1: are loved ones don't have to lean as much on
Speaker 1: tradition or guesses about what the dearly departed would have
Speaker 1: wanted for their funeral. Until the nineteen sixties, people might
Speaker 1: include funeral recommendations in their will, but didn't usually get
Speaker 1: more specific than that. And now people have gotten more
Speaker 1: comfortable with planning their own funerals, further driving the trend
Speaker 1: towards personalization. Organized religions lessening influence has also taken its
Speaker 1: toll on funerals. According to a Pew Research Center study,
Speaker 1: in about of US adults marked themselves as unaffiliated religious
Speaker 1: nuns of people who are atheist, agnostic, or nothing. In particular,
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, only sixteen percent of people were nuns.
Speaker 1: Traditional religions began losing their grip after the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: which has created more freedom to choose other styles of funerals,
Speaker 1: another opportunity for personalization. Laderman said to me, it's not
Speaker 1: a symptom of secularization or religion being absent. It's kind
Speaker 1: of new forms of religious expression that get bound up
Speaker 1: in the most religious moment for any of us, which
Speaker 1: is when we have to face death. Even the terminology
Speaker 1: of funerals has changed over the past few decades. It
Speaker 1: used to be called a funeral service, but that morphed
Speaker 1: into memorial served us and finally a celebration of life
Speaker 1: meant to showcase the deceased personality, poppies and accomplishments. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was written by Adina Solomon and produced by Tyler Clang.
Speaker 1: For more on this and lots of other lively topics,
Speaker 1: visit our home planet, How stuff Works dot com,