At the beginning of winter, my family has always collected pine branches, and made them into attractive, large arrangements which are then laid over the graves of family members. Locally, this is a common practice: you see them very frequently in cemetaries, and local florists even advertise when “grave blankets” are available for purchase.
My boss, who is from the South, had never heard of this practice. Another co-worker, who is from a town farther north, but in the same state, said she had never heard of it before she moved to this town.
Now, I’m curious. How widespread is this practice? From where did this custom originate?
I knew it was probably too obscure to get a concrete answer, but I thought I’d try anyway.
My area was settled by people mainly from Germanic origin, but this doesn’t seem to be a custom in Germany.
One of the aspects that struck me as somewhat unusual in its uniformity was the color of ribbons used: inevitably red. Red is not a color one often sees in cemetaries.
Any chance you’ve got the time to call a few florists and interview the odd gravetender Lissa? Unless there’s something in Eastern Funeral Director’s Quarterly about this, it could be down to you to document it.
I’ve got a guess - Christmas. Think about it- where else do you see pine branches and red ribbons? Christmas wreaths. I know that in my Italian-American family, grave blankets are specifically a Christmas decoration. In fact, my mother made them from the branches she cut off her Christmas tree.
I wasn’t sure from the description, but when samclem mentioned the upper Midwest, I thought that Sacndinavian immigrants might have brought a tradition with them.
In Denmark, that is a very common tradition and very much a Christmas thing - although we tend to buy them premade, lazy bums that we are. When travelling around shortly before Christmas to visit (and exchange gifts with) our living relatives, we’d also have a few grave blankets in the car, and visit the graves of those we’d be missing at the upcoming family celebrations.
My father passed away twenty years ago. Each holiday season since, she has gotten together with her aunt (a former florist) to make a grave blanket of evergreens, pine cones, berries and ribbon. We live in central Pennsylvania and have German roots. I don’t believe it is a widespread custom, although it may have been more popular in the past.
I live in a largely Italian/Catholic neighborhood in NJ, and grave blankets are very big here—there are florists who have signs in their windows, usually around Christian holidays.
My family has been in Toledo, Ohio, since the 1930s, and we have always taken part in the grave blanket/pillow tradition. In fact, we experience much guilt if we don’t “get the blankets on” the graves early enough. Also, if you wait too long, the ground is too frozen. Many, many florists and other places (such as grave stone companies) in Toledo sell them. All of the cemeteries in Toledo are strewn with them in the winter/Christmas season.