I wanted to share an article with you I came across that was published in January this year by Cruse Bereavement Care, it explores how death is treated around the world. Freelance writer Erica Buist and author of the book ‘This Party’s Dead’ draws on her own experience of grief in a bid to understand how different societies react to death, and how they celebrate the departed. Erica went to seven ‘Death Festivals’ around the world and here is her summary of how other countries deal with the sometimes taboo subject of death. I think we can definatly conclude that other countries do it very differently to us!
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It is the strangest of times to say the words, “I travelled the world visiting festivals for the dead”. After four years of research, interviews, travel writing, I landed in the UK after visiting the last of seven death festivals, just three months before the first case of coronavirus was recorded in China.
The seed of the project was, of course, grief. My then-fiancé and I found his father dead in his house after eight days (which I wrote about for Guardian Weekend). After a mental health episode which involved a period of agoraphobia, I realised this was as much to do with heightened death anxiety as it was my own loss, and I became interested in how people all over the world live day to day with the knowledge that they’re going to die. I am absolutely certain that the claim that we’re “more afraid” of death in the west is nonsense: we’re all afraid, by virtue of being human. But some of us are dealing with it well, and some are dealing with it badly.
Visiting the World’s Death Festivals
Mexico and Nepal
I used to live in Mexico, so I’d seen many Day of the Dead celebrations, and I wondered if anyone else responds to their mortal terror by throwing a party. It turns out so many do. I started the journey by returning to Mexico, after which I went to Nepal for Gai Jatra, which is a procession of everyone who has lost someone that year. It’s a joyful celebration with drums, music, dancing in the streets. The effect is incredible – the main lie grief tells you is that you’re alone, that no one understands what you’re feeling. But that’s impossible to believe when you’re looking at a crowd of people who are going through the exact same thing.
Sicily
I then went to Sicily for the Festa dei Morti, one of the only death festivals I found in Europe. Sicilian children wake up to gifts left not by Santa Claus, but by their dead relatives. What’s more, the gifts are hidden, so when they think of their dead loved ones, they associate them with a treasure hunt. It makes conversations about the dead happen in a joyful way, and normalises mentioning the dead.
Thailand
In Thailand, I celebrated a Chinese festival for the dead called Cheng Meng, or Qing Ming. My father has lived in Thailand for 20 years and his wife X (pronounced ‘Ek’) is half Chinese, so I went with my extended family to picnic in the cemetery and to burn paper money for the dead – though these days people also burn paper suits, clothes, houses and iPhones. X’s mother was very upset the first time they burned a paper mobile phone for her dead husband, complaining, “Your father never called me from Heaven.” X told her, “Oh no! It must be because we forgot to burn him a charger!”
Madagascar
The Turning of the Bones in Madagascar involves exhuming corpses from the family tomb, re-wrapping them in a fresh shroud, and dancing them on their shoulders as the sun sets. This was the first festival I’d been to that involved the dead people themselves – this seems more likely to happen in cultures where dying is associated with a gain in power rather than a loss. In the Malagasy tradition, the ancestors are the intermediary between people and God, and they are who people pray to for good harvests, health and happiness.
Japan
After the astonishing practices in Madagascar, I wasn’t expecting to be much moved by the Obon festival in Japan. Much like in Mexico, the spirits are invited to visit and food and drink is left out for them – and the invitation is good for a week. But Obon puts the emphasis on a goodbye ritual. The mountains surrounding Kyoto are lit with fires in the shape of giant Chinese characters so the spirits can hitch a ride back to Heaven on bonfire smoke. I found myself crying, saying goodbye to my father-in-law again – and I realised the point of the death festivals, and what it is they’ve noticed in Japan that we seem to have missed. That grief doesn’t heal like a cut, and that the death festivals are about carving out a moment to say goodbye again, and again, and again.
Indonesia
In Tana Toraja, Indonesia, the economy runs almost entirely on death. Torajans disrespect the ancestors at their peril; everyone has a story about the dead taking swift revenge, as well as giving generous rewards. People are not regarded as dead until they’ve had their funerals, which are huge, festival-like affairs that can take months or years to save up for. Until that day they are treated as “ill”, their corpses are brought meals and clothes and spoken to daily. The festival, Ma’nene, involves exhuming the corpses from the tombs, dressing them in brand new clothes, and walking them around. They are posed for photos and involved in FaceTime calls for family members who couldn’t make it. Every death festival taught me something about grief and death anxiety, but Ma’nene highlighted one of the most brutal ways we’re getting death wrong. I realised that in Tana Toraja, people remain part of the community long after their physical deaths, whereas here in the west people die their social deaths first – the dying are abandoned because people “don’t know what to say” or “want to remember them as they were.”
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So there we are! I don’t think the UK (or indeed most of Europe) will start to adopt anything like this anytime soon but its definatly an eye opener for us as to how other cultures perceive and actually celebrate death. Here in the western world death tends to be feared not revered, other cultures have a far more relaxed and open view to death and seem to be a lot happier for it on the whole. It would be lovely if we had some deep rooted traditions like some of the countries Erica visited, I’m not sure we should be going quite as far as the Madagascans or the Indonesians do but I rather like how they do it in Sicily! the notion of keeping the previous generations memories alive for the new generations and encouraging joy, positivity and most importantly conversations about their dearly departed sounds like a good idea to me. Lets not keep death a taboo subject, its the one thing in our lives that is actually guaranteed, no one can escape it, so talk to your family, ask them how they view death, tell them your funeral wishes, what music would you choose to sum up your life? talk about your departed loved ones till you laugh and cry and celebrate every beautiful memory of them you have.
