Posts Tagged ‘funeral etiquette’

Funeral Flowers: Correct etiquette 70 Years Ago Still Stands Today

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

The casket spray usually is purchased by immediate family.

The casket spray usually is purchased by immediate family.

About seventy years ago, your attendance at a funeral depended upon your social standing, your closeness to the deceased and the deceased’s rank in society. Grief, surely, had something to do with funerals, but Emily Post allots few paragraphs to that emotion and a multitude of paragraphs that attend to behaviors in her 1937 book, Etiquette.

Flowers deserved more words than emotions in her chapter on funeral etiquette. Flowers were sent only if warranted and — at the time — mostly to the deceased’s home or to the home of a close relative. Flowers took first place in the actions that any individual should take when notified of a funeral. At that time, notification usually came by card delivered through postal service or by hand. Upon receiving that card…

“…you should go at once to the house, write “With sympathy” on your card and leave it at the door. Or, you write a letter to the family. In either case you send flowers, addressed either to the funeral of _____ (name of the deceased) or to the nearest relative. The latter method is preferable, if the relative is a friend. But the former method is followed if the deceased alone was known to you.

“On the card accompanying the flowers, and addressed to one of the family, you write “With sympathy,” “With deepest sympathy,” or “With heartfelt sympathy,” or “With love and sympathy.” When flowers are addressed to the funeral of the deceased, no message is included. If there is a notice in the papers requesting that no flowers be sent, you disregard it only if you are a very intimate friend.

“A very natural impulse of kindness is to send a few flowers with a note either immediately or a few days or weeks after the funeral to any bereaved person who is particularly in through thoughts. A few flowers sent from time to time — possibly for long afterward — are especially comforting in their assurance of continued sympathy.”

Today, flowers may be too expensive to continuously send them to a bereaved person. The habit of sending more than one funeral arrangement may seem out of place today. Additionally, to continue to send flowers on a regular basis after a funeral may send a different message altogether over time.

On another note, a bereaved family today sincerely means what they say when they ask for no flowers just as they did seventy years ago. Not much has changed in this regard, as usually the closer family members may go together to buy a casket blanket or a number of pieces to accompany the funeral when that family asks for no flowers. But you — as a friend or distant relative — need to follow their advice and avoid sending flowers. You can, however, send a small plant or flowers to the home a few weeks after the funeral just to let the bereaved know that you continue to think about them.

In other words, one funeral arrangement per funeral is all you need to think about, and only if you are a family member or a close friend. Even then, with today’s economic environment, many bereaved families will understand a lack of flowers from you, and may not expect it in any case. Your attendance at the funeral, if warranted, probably would make that family happier than a few roses.

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Emily Post Eliminates a Funeral Tradition

Friday, November 27th, 2009
U.S. President Herbert Hoover and film star Mary Pickford in 1931.

U.S. President Herbert Hoover and film star Mary Pickford in 1931.

Recently, I wrote about Emily Post’s thoughts on funeral flowers. But, she devoted a whole chapter to funerals in her 1939 book, Etiquette. On this go-round, you’ll learn how Ms. Post viewed mourning, how she dispelled the “sitting up” tradition, and how she viewed servants who would not help during a time of need.

First, it was required that the affected family have “women friends” who followed similar taste and fashion. They could be relied upon to poke through a closet to find appropriate black dresses for the female mourners in the house. That friend also would make a list of any other items, such as gloves, that “will have to be procured.” All dressmaking establishments at the time must have been very competitive, as Ms. Post stated that they provide precedence to mourning orders and “will execute a commission within twenty-four hours.”

Additionally, clothing stores at the time would send a selection of clothes to a house on approval (this is providing that the house was firmly established in the neighborhood). With that said, Ms. Post does state that lending mourning materials, such as veils and wraps, is appropriate so that clothing that needed to be purchased could be kept to a minimum.

As for men, she writes:

As men’s clothes are standardized, most men can go to a clothier and buy a ready-made black suit. Otherwise they borrow one from a friend or wear what they have with a black band put on the left sleeve.

The tradition of “sitting up” with the deceased was popular before the practice of using embalming and funeral homes. Ms. Post stated that – by 1939 – this practice no longer was necessary unless the deceased “be a prelate or personage whose lying-in-state is a public ceremony, or unless it is the particular wish of the relatives.” She also stated the following, which may have been some relief for families who were not wealthy:

Nor is the soulless body dressed in elaborate trappings of farewell grandeur. Everything is done to avoid unnecessary evidence of the change that has taken place. In case of a very small funeral the person who has passed away is sometimes left lying in bed in night clothes, or on a sofa in a wrapper, with flowers, but no set pieces, about the room, so that an invalid or other sensitive bereft one may say farewell without ever seeing the all too definite finality of a casket. In any event the last attentions are paid in accordance with the wish of those most nearly concerned.

The above explanation could answer the question previously asked about how to get a casket through the door of a home in the article, Notes on the Old-Fashioned Home Funeral. If no casket was required, then the door would not be an issue. Remember, also, that she wrote this book first just as the Great Depression hit and the last edition was rendered immediately before World War II. During that entire decade, even the wealthy watched their pennies. Death’s pomp took second place, perhaps, behind groceries for the living.

Yet, Ms. Post felt the need to talk about servants and their duties during mourning. Although she began this section kindly, with a note that “kindness of heart is latent in all of us, and servants, even if they have not been long with a family, rise to such an emergency as a funeral,” at the end of this section, she wrote:

Family and intimate friends occupy all available accommodations, but it is a rare household which does not give sympathy as generously below stars as above; and a servant who did not willingly and helpfully assume a just share of the temporary tax on energy, time and consideration would be thought very heartless by the others.

Although I have not read this entire chapter about funerals in full detail, I have glanced through it. Not once — at least not yet — have I seen Ms. Post write about how to conduct oneself during a funeral for a servant. That said, Etiquette offers details on how the end of life was observed almost seven decades ago in this country. It is a perspective that is both curious and amusing in some details, as most citizens today are far removed from that lifestyle. At the same time, her work shows how outward details may have provided a hint of denial about death itself.

To get a grip on what 1930 might have looked like in regards to fashion, visit the Fashion in 1931 page at Wikipedia.

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A 1939 guide to Arranging and Recording Flowers

Sunday, November 22nd, 2009

funeral_flowers_churchI love old etiquette books, and I found one at a second-hand store last week. This is the prime Emily Post Etiquette, published first in 1927, with this latest edition from 1939. The bonus with this book is that Ms. Post devotes an entire chapter to funerals, so you may hear more about funeral etiquette from the early twentieth century over the upcoming weeks.

This particular entry regards flowers — specifically, the arranging and recording of flowers for a Protestant church funeral. You’ll soon discover that florists today take on many tasks assigned to friends in the past (pg 490):

An hour before the time for the service, if the family is Protestant, one or two woman friends got to the church to arrange the flowers which are placed about the chancel. If the flowers are many, these friends should, if possible, have the assistance of a florist, because the effective grouping and the fastening of heavy wreaths and sprays is likely to overtax the skill of novices, no matter how perfect their taste may be. Whoever takes charge of the flowers must carefully collect all the notes and cards. Also, they should always supply themselves with screw-point pencils, because the points of wood pencils break easily. On the outside of each envelope they write a description of the flowers that the card was sent with, as, for example:

“Large spray of Easter lilies and palm branches tied with white ribbon.”
“Laurel wreath with gardenias.”
“Long shear of pink roses and white lilies.”

Without such notations the family has no way of knowing anything about the flowers chosen by friends whom they especially care for. Moreover, these descriptions will identify the senders of the flowers when notes of thanks are sent.

The chancel, for those uninitiated in Protestant church architecture, is the area around the altar, often enclosed by a lattice or railing. Ms. Post uses this term to avoid stating that the flowers should be arranged around the casket (if this is a traditional burial), which also is placed in the chancel.

That aside, the advice about marking the flowers is a good idea, especially if you want to send thank-you notes to those who sent flowers. Unfortunately, Ms. Post had no entry that dealt with flowers that might be sent, despite instructions to send money to charity instead. I would think, given the heartfelt manner of the gift, that a thank-you note would be appropriate anyway.

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