Welcome to brain Stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here you know the image of a standard American, usually Christian funeral. It takes place at a funeral home with attendees dressed all in black. An open casket with an embalmed body rests in front of the crowd. After the service, a hearst takes the casket to a cemetery for burial. This was a conventional funeral in the nineteen sixties, but this sort of send off of the dead has
undergone adjustments over the decades. We spoke Gary Ladderman, chair of Emory University's Department of Religion and author of two books on death. He said that perhaps the most significant change is the rising popularity of cremation. Some religious beliefs have long worked to convince people of the importance of physically preserving loved ones, and it was more profitable for the funeral industry too, so burial remained prevalent. Latterman pointed
to the psychology of it too. He said, it's historically rooted in American culture. That is, the idea that we can preserve the body. That's an important concept and how we respond to and think about death. But the idea of preserving the body started changing with the publication of a seminal book, Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death, a nineteen sixty three best selling expose a of how some members of the U. S. Funeral home industry were
fleecing mourners. Creation provided alternative ideas to consumers. In the nineteen sixties, the cremation rate was only three but today Creation's outpaced burials, if only slightly. As of seen, according to the Cremation Association of North America, the US cremation rate was fifty one point six percent. By two the rate is projected to jump by more than six percentage points. Cremation has raised questions about the importance of the body
and its role in funerals. Lattiman said, clearly the idea that somehow the body needs to be preserved for all time and a casket intervolt no longer holds. We have different ideas about symbolic religious meanings of the body, but Midford's expos a isn't the only reason for changing funeral norms. In the nineteen sixties were a time of cultural upheaval,
which extended to analyzing accepted death customs. Ladderman said it's also in tandem with the whole spirit of the nineteen sixties, challenging authority, new forms of spirituality, new ways of thinking about the afterlife. All these things, in addition to the politics, that too, contributes to a major shift in people's thinking about death, how they experienced death, and what they do with a corpse. Also, consumer culture has shifted since the
nineteen sixties, allowing people more opportunities for customization. According to Taste, you might recognize this in the myriad ways funerals have gotten personalized requests for mourners to wear non black clothing, music liked by the deceased playing at the funeral, or tombstones they pay homage to the person's hobbies. These days are loved ones don't have to lean as much on tradition or guesses about what the dearly departed would have
wanted for their funeral. Until the nineteen sixties, people might include funeral recommendations in their will, but didn't usually get more specific than that. And now people have gotten more comfortable with planning their own funerals, further driving the trend towards personalization. Organized religions lessening influence has also taken its toll on funerals. According to a Pew Research Center study, in about of US adults marked themselves as unaffiliated religious
nuns of people who are atheist, agnostic, or nothing. In particular, in two thousand seven, only sixteen percent of people were nuns. Traditional religions began losing their grip after the nineteen sixties, which has created more freedom to choose other styles of funerals, another opportunity for personalization. Laderman said to me, it's not
a symptom of secularization or religion being absent. It's kind of new forms of religious expression that get bound up in the most religious moment for any of us, which is when we have to face death. Even the terminology of funerals has changed over the past few decades. It used to be called a funeral service, but that morphed into memorial served us and finally a celebration of life
meant to showcase the deceased personality, poppies and accomplishments. Today's episode was written by Adina Solomon and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other lively topics, visit our home planet, How stuff Works dot com,