Modern American culture takes a lot of hits these days from its bemused critics in other developed nations across the globe. And the critiques are especially pervasive in respect to funerals.
Even as they adopt many of the beneficial and pleasant practices that have developed from a consumer-driven, free-market life style in the United States, cultural leaders across Europe, South America, Africa Australia and Asia tend to bemoan many of what they consider to be strange excesses of modern American culture. And American funerals are not immune to those critiques.
Alas, even insiders in the American Way are known to offer a few stinging rebukes of the culture’s modern ways, and there may be something to be learned from those who might question – whether the critic be foreign or domestic – the modern practices of what seems to be humanity’s modern cultural leader, the People of the United States. So, with that in mind, we offer this following view of what much of the rest of the world – and even a growing number of critics in the country itself – thinks of what has become of a “traditional” funeral in American.
Too Expensive
The first thing that anyone who takes a serious, critical look at modern funerals in the United States will likely say is that they are just way too expensive. Death care in the country has become a significantly powerful and wealthy industry, and stock market players all know that a sure fire bet for good dividends and other healthy returns is to make sure a portfolio includes a good amount of stock in companies in the funeral and cemetery trade. Revenues and profitability for these companies has grown at paces well beyond that of other industries for several decades and analysts do not expect the trend to end soon. This is a good sign for a healthy American economy. But, for outsiders (and even for insiders who are trying to pay for a funeral) it is just downright strange.
Why does an average funeral and burial cost more than $15,000 these days? Why is embalming service commanding more than $600 per hour these days? And why would anyone pay 4 men in suits more than $1,000 to show up at a church to shake hands of mourners when plenty of church members would have been honored to provide the same service for free?
Those are questions that critics of American funerals simply do not know how to answer, and those in the United States can only answer with this unsatisfactory response: it’s what the market will bare.
Too Informal
Alas, Americans may be tempted to complain that they cannot win for losing at this next idea that comes from critics of the standard funeral in the United States.
In an effort to keep prices down, many families have adopted funeral traditions that cost little or nothing to accommodate. Home funerals are at the top of this list; burials in private, family-run cemeteries are another; and still further, many families simply order a cremation of their loved one and forgo all pomp and circumstance of a funeral all together. In these cases – which, admittedly, have done little to affect the every growing average of funeral and burial expenses in the nation – a family can spend less than $3,000 for the funeral and burial of a loved one. And, even though the options are not often exercised, they are certainly still available (quite readily, in fact) in the nation’s free-market economy. So, one would think this would help keep the critics of the modern American funeral at bay.
But no. As they say, haters will always hate. The complaint about these low-cost options for funerals in the United States is that they are simply to informal. For guidance on proper behavior and customs at a funeral, see our guide on Funeral Etiquette.
In other countries, it seems, funeral organizers have managed to get their cake and eat it too. They can, apparently, contract funeral directors and other professionals to arrange elaborate, elegant, and even glorious services for their deceased all for about the price that Americans can do it themselves. And the do-it-yourself way is just too much to handle for a typical foreigner’s tastes, apparently. The idea of a simple casket, a funeral that does not include many flowers and a crew of well-dressed ushers, and a burial site that is not attended with an elaborately sculpted headstone, is just too much of a disappointment for a European’s outlook – or that of anyone in a culture that considers itself adequately developed.
While many Americans find that cutting their costs for funeral and burial expenses leads to spiritually healthy experiences that they might not have otherwise known could be accomplished, many foreigners are downright horrified that such a wealthy and sophisticated nation would arrive at a point where such horrors are even considered on a regular basis.
Wasteful
And, finally, critics in the rest of the world seems willing to dismiss the typical American funeral as wasteful in many ways. Why are burial vaults necessary, for example, one Danish critique has opined. Isn’t that just putting a casket inside a casket? It’s hard to argue with that logic, yet, burial vaults have long been required staples of cemeteries across the United States, and customers very regularly purchase the voluntary upgrades of their burial vaults. These elaborately designed and decorated containers will never been seen by anyone except, perhaps an archeologist who happens to dig up a grave site in 2256, yet families across the nation eagerly spend up to $20,000 – $50,000 for their construction and installation. Yes, the American free-market is very curious, indeed for many foreigners.
And, though the somewhat humorous examples of American memorial wastefulness that have been noted by commentators across the globe could go on for pages and pages, we’ll end with just one more: escorted funeral processions. For more on what actually happens during a burial, see our guide on Graveside Services at a Cemetery. Americans traditionally hire up to a dozen police officers – and sometimes the officers are even provided at tax payers expense – to escort a line of cars from a funeral home or church to a cemetery where a body is to be laid to rest. To be sure, the funeral procession tradition is also certainly alive and well in many other nations across the world, but many critics have noted that the United States is the only country in which these parades are professionally escorted. In other countries, the cars simply travel in close proximity and everyone generally arrives at the grave site in one piece and at about the same time. Why do Americans need police to assure mourners get to their graveside safely and in good time? Well, the answer is largely a mystery.