As the sun slipped over the horizon, the eyes of the ancient vampire opened.

Wednesday, August 25, 1999

As the sun slipped over the horizon, the eyes of the ancient vampire opened. Ahhh, another night to live and to hunt … if only he could remember how to open up this new sleeping box. Square instead of six-sided like his old coffin, this modern-day casket had a little more room at the feet and the head and made a nice change from his old bed. Change wasn’t always bad, and lately it had been pretty good.

It isn’t only the vampires who are making changes. This century, at least, has seen some major changes in the way we see our dead off on their voyage to the next level of existence.

Not usually one to dwell on death, an informal lecture sparked my interest a couple weeks ago. I found that both the rituals and the trappings of death have changed.

Coffin or casket sir?

The question of coffin versus casket is almost moot here, as most of the choices are caskets. (A casket is rectangular, while a coffin is the more traditional body-shaped container, narrower at the head and feet, widest at the shoulders.) In other places in the world coffins remain the norm.

Funeral home owner Paul Worlein explained that difference as a question of resources versus labor. Coffins are more labor intensive, but use less material. Caskets are easier to mass produce and require less skill, but use more materials.

Technology seems to have spurred on many changes.

Take the wake, for example. An all-night watch beside the corpse, it was done for different reasons. It may of have been to comfort the spirits of the recently deceased or to protect the body from evil spirits. It was also most definitely to watch for signs of life. Before modern tests were developed, an unconscious person might be mistaken for dead.

The art of embalming has also had an impact, the most important one being the lengthening of time between death and the burial.

Before embalming became common practice here, people put a sort of prop-board in the coffin or casket to hold the body up and ice was placed underneath to keep things as fresh as possible. Now it can be days, even weeks (rare) between death and burial.

In other countries embalming isn’t such a standard practice, because most people are buried within a day or two according to World Book.

In Lebanon, at least in the Christian villages, funerals are usually held on the same day as the death or the next day. Whenever someone in the village dies, the church bells ring and the news goes from house to house. Black is still de rigueur and the immediate family of the deceased is expected to remain in mourning for some time after the death – 40 days sounds right. Included in the immediate time of mourning is a complete ban on watching TV or listening to radio – to turn one on is to show disrespect.

A few other practices that may continue elsewhere but seem to have gone by the wayside here in America:

– Parlor services – when families used to display the body in the home, rather than utilizing a funeral home for the viewing.

– Wreaths on the door and black armbands – both disappeared about the same time as the parlor services.

– Formal period of mourning and black at the funeral – although somber colors are still the most common, dress codes today are much less formal.

Jana Peterson’s column appears Wednesdays