Most of the funerals I’ve been to have been open casket. But, that might be due to the fact that most of the funerals I’ve been to have been Muslim ones, where the last rites are performed at the funeral, and then everyone pays their last respects to the deceased. So, my view is probably a bit skewed.
in 99.9% of jewish funerals, the casket is closed as its actually a tenet of the religion to do so. it is done this way because jews feel that it is unnecessary for the dying to have to worry about how they’re going to look once they’re dead. unless the person was non practicing the only way the coffin would be open would be either at the deceased’s specific request or privately for family members only. jews believe that the body is simply a vessel and that once the person dies, what is left over is not that person, it’s just a husk, hence the closed casket deal. as for the obituary, i think the status of the casket at the funeral was mentioned because many non jews expect to be able to pay their final respects “face to face” and i fully belive that some people come to wakes specifically for this purpose. having that line in the obituarty would lessen the possibility of some i’m sure well meaning, but upset mourner either questioning the family or the staff at the funeral home as to why they weren’t going to be able to say their goodbyes as they’d imagined.
imagine having a family member die in such a way as to disfigure them and then to have to reiterate the fact to 10 or 15 semi strangers at a wake.
(btw, jews don’t have traditional wakes either. there’s a service, then the burrial and then the survivors sit shiva for an amount of time generally determined by their level of orthodoxy…
Maybe this is a rural Midwestern Lutheran thing, but all the funerals I’ve been to have been aggressively open-casket. When I say “aggressively,” I mean that the casket stayed open through the whole service and was closed only just before the casket was removed for its trip to the cemetery. Also, most of these funerals featured at least one mourner collapsed weeping over and into the casket, the result being that they were practically hugging the dead body.
Additionally, the viewings prior to these funerals were extremely long (five hours, in one case, and most people stayed nearly the whole time). Almost everyone went up and sat by the casket and stared at the dead body for a long time. Then they proceeded to socialize and laugh with each other in the viewing room!
My mother and I feel this is a very creepy way to conduct things. However, the rural Midwestern Lutherans who were in charge of these funerals seem to believe that closing the casket indicates suicide or a gruesome, disfiguring accident. It’s just not done unless it absolutely has to be.
When my mother was a little girl they still kept the custom of laying out the body at home and making the children kiss it. She remembers this with her grandfather’s body.
All the funerals I’ve been to (Italian Catholic) have been very open casket (except for my great-uncle, who died of aggressive mouth cancer), though we generally haven’t had people collapse into the casket as Q.N. mentioned. There is a lot of touching of the body, though.
Traditional Catholic and Orthodox theology teaches that the body is an integral part of the individual, so when a person dies, their body isn’t just an empty shell, but an important part of who they are. This is why cremations are forbidden, and also why relics of saints are venerated. The soul and spirit have departed, but the body is still here.
My aunt recently died, and I insisted on being part of making the arrangements because I’ve read so much about the predatory and manipulative tactics of some funeral homes. I took Jessica Mitford’s suggestions, and studied the laws of our state before going, so I would be able to rebut any false statements of what was “required.” I was loaded for bear, ready for a fight. They wouldn’t manipulate my family, I vowed.
They didn’t even try. The man who met with us was upfront, honest, and didn’t try to push any services or purchases on the family. There was no effort to make the family feel guilty for not spending loads of money.
The family opted for direct cremation, and we did not buy a casket. However, we did decide we needed to have calling hours for the members of the community who had cared about my aunt. The funeral home “loaned” us a lovely oak casket, to placed in the front of the room, and took care of all of the details, such as the register book, and the obituary leaflets. The bill for this came to $300, which I felt was quite reasonable.
All in all, I was pleased with the way we were treated, and a little bit ashamed that I had assumed the worst about the funeral home.
As to the OP, I wonder if it’s possible that the line indicating that the casket would be closed in the obituary was a way of letting sensitive people know that they would not have to view the body. I have known a few people who refused to go to funerals or calling hours because of a strong aversion to seeing the body of the deceased. A line such as that in the death notice or obituary would be reassuring for these kinds of people.
My grandpa’s funeral was neither closed casket nor open casket. No casket. No body. They only used pictures of him.
Every other funeral I’ve been to has been open casket. Although all but two were from my ex-wife’s family and that is their tradition.
There would have been no point in an open-casket funeral for Dad, because he didn’t look like himself. He didn’t even look like a distorted version of himself; he just looked like a different person. (Besides which, I think an open-casket funeral would be a little macabre.)
They let us see him for a little while at the funeral home, and then we decided to have the casket closed, and it stayed closed for the rest of the process.
In the UK the coffin (casket) is usually closed all the time, from when it arrives in the hearse. If you want to view the body, you have to go along to the funeral director’s beforehand.