Sunday quiet. Did you go to Church?

@ArishMell [Responding to StanLei's sad-face symbol] ... which are becoming rather more frequent at my age!

Though the last I attended, only a week or so ago, was entirely secular.

@ArishMell All the funerals I've attended over the last couple of decades have been secular. Christianity is losing its grip on society at last.

@Lynda70 On balance I have probably attended more religious than secular funerals, but they did vary. One was Roman Catholic, another Salvation Army, the others Anglican. I was unable to attend one that was Wiccan.

Christianity has been losing that influence for decades though.

I am not religious but it does not worry me going to a religious funeral. It's respecting the deceased and supporting the bereaved emotionally, that count for me.

@ArishMell In the past, funerals tended to be religious. I attended a Pagan one some 30 years ago. They had to have police in attendance because of threats from local Christians. :( In recent years secular funerals seem to become more common.

@Lynda70 Threats from (self-styled) "Christians" - and as recently as the 1990s... That's awful!

Not only secular funeral rites now but also "direct cremations" in which the mourners may gather in the crematorium garden to see the cortege, but must not enter the chapel.

One thing that struck me about that secular funeral I attended recently was that unlike others I'd been to, there was no committal with a ceremonial closing of the curtain. Instead, the coffin stayed on the catafalque so everyone could say a brief personal good-bye as we filed past and out into the gardens.

While at two other crematoria I recall no closing of curtains round between stationary catafalque and congregation, but the catafalque carrying the deceased through the curtains beyond it - a sort of mechanical "exit stage right".


I did see a video of the Pagan funeral, of an old friend. It was also a "Woodland Burial".

@ArishMell The coffin was left on the catafalque at a funeral I attended last year. At another I attended "Time to say Goodbye" (Bocelli & Brightman) was played as the curtains were closing. They got to the words "Time to say goodbye" just as the curtains closed.

@Lynda70
Rather touching, that.

I heard recently of one similar do in which the music was a Metallica track, and "Always Look On The Bright Side" from The Life of Brian!

I was told the deceased had that sort of humour....