VSS: Ceremony & Memorialization - "Humans and Communities Cannot Survive Without Rituals"

This program centers around the value, purpose, and benefit of rites, rituals, and ceremonies. Part of being human is the ability to develop ceremonies and rituals to mark rites of passage, but interestingly humans are not the only creatures on earth that do this also. For example, elephants have developed primitive death rituals, which have been studied and interpreted for years. The importance of rites, rituals, and ceremonies in the funeral and cemetery professions cannot hardly be overstated. The case could easily be made that if the ritual and ceremony of a death experience is removed, taken away, or abandoned, then funeral directors and cemeterians become mere dead body disposers, and this statement is no exaggeration because in some places, this is already happening. The purpose and goal of this seminar is to dissect the DNA of rituals, then analyze them, and then most importantly offer some thoughts and suggestions on programs that the funeral home and cemetery can implement to create ritualistic literacy in a culture that is quickly moving towards ritualistic illiteracy. Ritualistic illiteracy has already taken an incalculable toll on our professions, and this is particularly true with economic negative consequences.