What are some local traditions you have that you think are useless?

@SW-User yes, it's not like they can wake up

@SW-User that's the thing. I realised how strange it is at the last one I went to. It was for a young woman I knew who died in a car crash.

The whole time I was thinking why are we in here with her body? She died in a car crash ffs she's not about to get back up.


Wakes made sense in centuries past to ensure that the person was really definitely dead, but we have modern medicine and doctors now and they aren't going to get that wrong.

@SW-User it's really tradition for the sake of tradition, and it's not one I like

@SW-User What's a wake?

@Nomad7 essentially a party for a dead person with the dead person

@SW-User Interesting. It would be ironical if they drank themselves to death and that's not entirely improbable, if you're Irish

@Nomad7 wow, yeah, all Irish people die from that, either that or potato blight

@SW-User Well, at least the party goes on

@SW-User I worked with a Filipino woman who said her little sister got a virus, had a fever and died. During the wake when the family was mourning her she woke up. I think that would be a good reason for a wake.

@cherokeepatti That was the oeigonal purpose of the tradition. However, nowadays in this country, I don't think it likely that medical professionals are going to be unsure about whether or not someone is actually dead.


I may be wrong though, I'll admit.

@cherokeepatti wow. So is her sister still alive?

@TurtlePink yes she survived. Imagine if that happened over here and they had her embalmed before she woke up. I think that might have happened quite a bit, something we never want to think about.

@cherokeepatti it's like the scene from Monty Python.

"Bring our yer dead"

Someone chucks an old guy on a barrow who sits up and shouts, "I'm not dead yet" and the barrow pusher tells him it doesn't matter as he will be soon.

@Raine they say that before embalming was a common practice that whenever a grave was dug up to do forensic testing or whatever that sometimes they’d find caskets that had the fabric clawed and shredded up because the person who was presumed dead had woken up. What a horrible thing to happen.

@cherokeepatti some were very evil in those days. A husband could say his wife was mad and get the poor woman locked away for the rest of her life while he often kept her dowry and remarried.