In my experience, yes. They’re so damn chipper and perky, it’s actually a bit creepy.
Anecdote: A couple in my ward had a child. Something was wrong with the baby, unfortunately, and it did not live. I went to the funeral with my parents. The mormons believe that children are held spiritually accountable as of age 8; therefore, babies are placed in the “automatically saved” category. So these people believed the child would have an express ticket straight to the Celestial Kingdom (the highest level of mormon heaven). Therefore, it was considered inappropriate behavior to show any signs of grieving for the child at the funeral. The parents, grandparents, ward members, everyone, was expected to be celebrating this child’s death. The atmosphere at this funeral was similar to any ward social gathering, with people laughing and joking and being that goddamn perky/chipper all the time.
Not much has creeped me out more than that experience.
I’ve never been to a baby’s funeral, but that doesn’t surprise me for funerals in general. When I was at a namby-pamby liberal Presbyterian church while I’m sure nobody would have called your out or conspired to make you happy during a funeral, the rule was that a funeral was supposed to be a “celebration of their life” not “a mourning of their death.” Often I heard stories of funerals with upbeat music and food that the deceased liked – along with the very occasional reference to there being dancing or something. I think even the invitations/fliers/announcements for most funerals I saw were something like “You are invited to celebrate the life of…”
In my experience Mormons are all over the map. One of them has a temper and is pretty quickly depressed.
One of them is the typical happy go-lucky family, but are unusually catty and judgmental. Complaining about people not dressing modestly enough etc – her mom was even worse, occasionally making snide comments to parents about how one of her daughter’s and my mutual friend was Jewish. Though it seems at least my friend has ceased the judgmental stuff in public/to others unless it really pushes one of her buttons (and the things that push her buttons are usually pretty heinous things like when others wish death on people), which can be forgiven since we all have buttons. 2/3 kids in that family were, er… “totally just hanging out with this guy as friends all the time and definitely not dating and won’t you be surprised when we start dating the SECOND we’re both 16” before they were 16. No clue how common that is with Mormons, but it made me chuckle (well, it makes me chuckle NOW, it made me jealous then because I had a crush on one of them – glad I never opened THAT particular can of worms).
Another acts like you’d expect a normal person to act. But he’s an oddball anyway since he’s incredibly liberal and a very vocal critic of Romney. He’s also a physicist and a Mormon theology and history buff. I can’t imagine the amount of doublethink he goes through routinely. He overreacts a lot when people criticize the church too much, which hints to me that he’s either somehow completely blissfully unaware or perfectly aware and trying too hard to resolve his knowledge and political beliefs with his religion.
This would be an interesting paper. I could think of a really good historian who could write it, if only he were given more access to the [del]Black Hole of Hidden Mormon History[/del] First Presidency’s Vault.
You have to remember that Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both taught apocalypse predictions of the imminent return of Christ. Joseph Smith is quoted as saying in 1835 that no more than 56 years would pass before the Second Coming. Brigham Young had expect the end and had set out to create a theocracy which would welcome Christ. He died in 1877, the message was carried out by his successor.