June is here, which means that it's about time for our annual Cemetery Homecoming, a potluck get-together where the relatives of those buried at the old family graveyard gather for food, prayer and socializing.
Friends from other parts of the country are often shocked when they hear me say that I'm going to a party at a cemetery. Likewise, I'm always surprised to hear that not everyone goes to events like these. The idea of an annual gathering of this sort is so deeply entrenched in the culture around here that our cemetery has large, permanent barbecue pits, an outhouse, and an expansive pavilion with picnic tables to seat 100, all in support of the annual homecoming.
The idea of graveyard gatherings evidently has roots going back to before the Civil War, when they were called Decoration Days, since folks would go out and decorate the graves of deceased loved ones. In fact, this is likely where our modern Memorial Day celebrations come from. According to Wikipedia:
Annual Decoration Days for particular cemeteries are held on a Sunday in late spring or early summer in some rural areas of the American South, notably in the mountains. In cases involving a family graveyard where remote ancestors as well as those who were deceased more recently are buried, this may take on the character of an extended family reunion to which some people travel hundreds of miles. People gather on the designated day and put flowers on graves and renew contacts with kinfolk and others. There often is a religious service and a "dinner on the ground," the traditional term for a potluck meal in which people used to spread the dishes out on sheets or tablecloths on the grass. It is believed that this practice began before the American Civil War and thus may reflect the real origin of the "memorial day" idea.
You would think that such an event would be morbid, or at least depressing. When I describe them, especially when I mention that my parents and I usually swing by our own plots after visiting the graves of relatives, folks often react like I said I attended a meeting of a crazed death-cult. But these cemetery homecomings have a surprisingly peaceful and happy tone to them. Our cemetery was started by a small handful of farming families in the 1850s, and almost everyone who comes to the modern events is a descendant of one of them. Many of the attendees are related in some way, so when you encounter someone with a name you recognize from your own family tree, it's fun to play the name game to see how you're related to one another.
I think one of the biggest benefits of these events, though, is the way they give you a sense of comfort about the cycle of life. There's a palpable sense of connectedness among both the living and the dead: Those of us still living are connected to one another, and we are connected to those who have passed, just as those who have passed were connected to one another, and to those who died before them. We recognize names scrawled on nametags, just as we recognize names carefully chiseled onto tombstones, and there's a feeling that we're surrounded by loved ones, both those alive on earth and those alive on the other side. There's a comfort in imagining future generations coming to celebrate in this same place, to think of our own graves as places of gathering and life. Though my Protestant relatives wouldn't describe it this way, it feels like a celebration of the Communion of Saints. It's a reminder that just as we are all reunited for a short day here on earth, we hope to be reunited with each other, and with all those who have gone before us, for eternity.
I'd be interested to know: Are there Cemetery Homecomings like this in other parts of the country, or is graveyard socializing just a Texas thing?
Comments
Post a Comment
In the Philippines, most people do this every year. For All Saint’s day and All Soul’s day early in November. Family reunions gather in cemeteries around the graves of their deceased relatives. It is sure to be traffic around major cemeteries that time of the year. In fact it is so ingrained in our culture that there are even food stalls like KFC and Shakeys along the road sides. It’s a festive atmosphere!
Though my family prefers visiting when cemeteries are less crowded.
My mom, who grew up as a Baptist in West Virginia in the 1920s and 30s has fond memories of just these sorts of gatherings. They would clear the weeds and grass from the graves, talk about the history of the family, tell stories about loved ones and picnic on the graves(no fancy picnic area then. It should be noted that now, at 87, she has no fear of death.
I’ve never heard of this before but it does remind me of a tradition our family started a few years ago. The Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia has a natural burial ground. We chose it for our final resting place after needing somewhere to bury our baby. I love it for many reasons, one of which is the burial ground has nature trails, a butterfly garden (a pet project of the Abbott), picnic pavillions, and bbq grills. There is LIFE there! We chose our son’s plot based on its proximity to the picnic area. :) We make a trip at least once a year as a family to spend the day. (it is five hours away) Hopefully the happy memories we are establishing now will help my children carry on the tradition after my husband and I are laid to rest.
In Illinois, many farmers were buried in plots of land adjacent to each others’ farms in the 1800s. Everyone in the community rotated custodial duties to maintain the plots. They would picnic and have gatherings in the cemeteries. By the 1900s, the farms had been torn down and replaced with modern homes. Families of the dead would picnic in the areas around the graves. Today, no one is left alive to visit the dead. The Forest Preserve doesn’t have the manpower to maintain the plots. Teens and partygoers trash the places at night. The graves are desecrated and the graveyards are used for Satanic and other rituals. Some of us are volunteers who are trying to restore each cemetery, one at a time. There are few people who care to visit the dead much less take care of the place.
Despite my family’s Texas roots, I’ve never heard of this custom. But my mom grew up as an army brat so maybe they were jut less connected with the extended family. I can’t imagine having this kind of multi-generational closeness. My dad’s parents are buried in Illinois. My mom’s parents are buried in Arizona. My parents will most likely be buried in Texas. I have no idea about my great-grandparents. But I love this idea and wish it was something we could tap into. I used to take my oldest walking in the nearby cemetary when she was a toddler because there was no park in walking distance. Today she still has positive associations with cemeteries.
Lovely article, thanks.
I had always heard that Memorial Day started when Southern women tended the graves of fallen Yankee soldiers because it was the right thing to do & because they hoped their loved ones who died in the North would be shown the same respect.
But from what you write, it sounds like there was already a tradition of annually cleaning up/decorating family graveyards.
I really enjoy visiting old cemeteries & reading the inscriptions on the monuments.It’s a shame that we’ve moved away from the beautiful memorials you see in places like New Orleans & Savannah.
In southern Louisiana, this is done in conjuction with All Souls Day. Families will visit cemeteries to clean up and whitewash the tomb, bring flowers, and pray for the dead. We would gather for a meal afterwards, and of course, visit the church to pray for the Poor Souls in Purgatory.
I’ve never heard of it in Missouri, but I do know a lot of people make pretty serious roadtrips to decorate the graves of friends and family. Met a couple of ladies this year who came from northern Iowa and headed south to decorate 15 graves in eight cemeteries.
I’m from North Alabama, and Decoration Day is an older tradition than anybody remembers, and it’s just like that. I’m now in grad school for history at the University of Mississippi, where there’s a lot of focus on the history of Southern culture and religion – the New Encycopledia of Southern Culture is published here. In reading and talking to my professors, and talking to old folks back home, I’ve learned that it used to be more focused on bringing the community together to clean up, care for, and decorate the cemetery. Now the cleanup and decoration are done beforehand, but when people lived far-flung and travel was harder, it took a community celebration like this, and a down-home potluck meal, to make a day of it. I have so many fond memories of Decoration, walking among the graves with the old folks, hearing them recount their loved ones now passed on as if they were still here – even distant ancestors. It was all very Catholic, bringing to mind a communion of saints and loved ones; and I can say that Decoration sparked my historical consciousness and made an historian of me. It probably contributed to making a Catholic of me, too, come to think of it (I’m a new convert just this year).
Also, FWIW, my dad grew up closer to Montgomery, Ala., and had never heard of it before he moved up here. Many of my friends from other parts of the South had never heard of it. It’s a mountain thing, like the wiki suggests. What part of Texas are you from, and do you have any idea where the cemetery’s folks originated before they came there?
Few other places offer such a sense of history, order and peace. I love well kept cemeteries. ‘Dinner on the ground,’ what an exceptional idea!
All of our best family photos are made in the cemetery. People think it’s weird, but I just smile. It’s joyous and loving and not sad or morbid in the least.
This is very similar to the annual Mexican celebration “Dia de los Muertos.” Towns like Patzcuaro have become famous for their all-night candelit communal vigils and parties in the town’s cemeteries…
For pics: http://www.mexicoinsmallbytes.com/november.html
I thought my family was the only one who did this…we’re from Alabama.
@Joseph Richardson, where in northern Alabama are you from? My family’s from the Birmingham area, and we’ve done this every year for at least 70 years.
I’m a recent convert, too, and I never thought of how this annual might have contributed to my conversion, so thank you for the food for thought!
@Joanna, I’m from Decatur. My family is from a town out in SW Morgan County called Danville, and many of the churches and cemeteries in that area – SW Morgan, NW Cullman, SE Lawrence, and NE Winston, have Decoration.
My life is full of so many things like this, all the way back to my childhood, that influenced me in subtle ways, put thoughts and sentiments in my head, that all together, in the end, led me to the Church. I never realized where the trail was leading until I was there. It was like putting together the thousand pieces of a puzzle, as God dropped the pieces to me one by one, and the magnificent image of the Church not coming fully into focus until the final piece.
Like Joseph and Joanna, I was raised in north Alabama (lived in Albertville and Decatur) and am familiar with Decoration - it was typically in May there. However, my family was transplanted from south Alabama and thought it was rather odd. :) As I grew older, though, I became interested in cemeteries. I love to visit older ones - even if I have no personal connection to it.
As Jane said, in south Louisiana we do this in conjunction with observance of All Saint/All Souls. Far too hot to do all that work in late spring.
Late spring is the perfect time for the blooming of flowers and the general abounding of life: a wonderful contrast to the cold stone we dress with such warmth, and a reminder that death is not death after all for we who believe. It’s hot in my neck of the woods, too, but we wouldn’t have it any other season. Also, this is by and large an evangelical Protestant thing about here: there’s just aren’t, and haven’t been, many Catholics, and no observances of All Saints’ or All Souls’. (Interestingly, I started observing them both as a Protestant a number of years ago without even any real appreciation of their theological significance — I just thought it was a neat idea to have a holiday dedicated to visiting cemeteries and remembering our dear departed in Christ.)
Well, my midwestern Protestant family would describe it as the Communion of Saints, but we’re Lutheran. The whole picnic thing is a little foreign, but when the family farm was still in the family, the church and the cementary were right next door. When we came to visit from far away, people would always walk over to the cemetary and people would tell stories. Mostly I remember it as being happy, although my mother was often tearful at the end because my infant sister was buried there.
I think there is something healthy about remembering that death happens. That it’s not actually unthinkable that babies die, that people are widowed young, or that modern medicine can’t fix everything. These are awful, terrible things, and I don’t mean to minimize the grief. But I think there is something about knowing that survivors live through these things. That the dead aren’t some kind of “thing that must never be spoken of.” That while losing someone too young is awful and tragic the survivors can go on.
Cool. What a great tradition, but unheard of here in coastal CA. (Death? Don’t say it!) My baby boy is buried fairly close to his great, great grandparents, but in a spot with all the other babies. I’ve wondered on occasion what the true connection is between the burial spot and the soul that lives on. I’m not exactly sure what it really is, but for this reason I feel uneasy when I hear of ashes being scattered. I suppose that if God counts hairs on the head and notes when a sparrow falls, he knows where every last bit of ash is too.
.
A few years ago, I had a very dear prayer intention; I prayed the rosary for it in a mission graveyard where the Franciscans have been buried for hundreds of years, praying also for them by name if needed, and asking for intercessory prayer. I did the same in the family graveyard. I’m still amazed over how monumentally my prayer was answered. The communion of the saints is a beautiful reality.
Doesn’t anyone here know about the Dio de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)? Families visit the graves of their departed loved ones to pay respect and remember their love and the happiness they shared.
They also display skulls and skeletons doing everyday activities—kind of a momento mori. Very beautiful holiday.
They don’t do this in Southern California that I’ve ever heard of. It’s too bad. I think it would be comforting. In my family (non-Catholic) there seems to be a preference for cremation and scattering, and it feels very disconnected somehow. Folks in SoCal are already a little disconnected to begin with since we’re mostly descended from people who left their families on the East Coast or in the Midwest.
Despite all the feel-good comments posted here, I have a differing opinion. It’s one thing to have a small, quiet family gathering to remember the deceased at the cemetery. That would be a beautiful and heart-warming gathering. But, unfortunately, where I live in Southern California, certain people turn it into an all-out party, complete with playing frisbee across the graves and loud music.
I beg of you, please have some respect for those who wish to visit the quiet resting place of their loved one without the disruption of a raucous horde of loud party-goers.
There is a German-speaking denomination called the ‘Moravians’ who settled in PA, and, later in the mid 1700’s in NC and other states—that clean the simple, white headstones in their cemeteries on the Saturday before Easter to make “God’s Acre” ready for the predawn/dawn Easter service. The Easter service is preceeded by so-called church-wide ‘love feasts’—a service of scripture reading, band music and singing-complete with coffee and buns; after the coffee and buns, the celebrants raise lighted candles in a dark church.
If families (many of whom have completely died out) are unable to clean the stones in God’s acre, other members of the church will undertake the arduous task of cleaning the stones and putting flowers on the graves. These traditions have been going on since the mid 1700’s.
In Hawaii, we honor our family members and friends who have gone before us by celebrating at the cemeteries.. On Memorial Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas cemeteries are full with families having picnics and bbq’s.
AROUND ALL SOULS DAY, A CHURCH WHERE MOST OF MY FAMILY IS BURIED,THEY HAVE SERVICES THEN A FUNCTION AT THE CHURCH, AND SOMETIMES WE WOULD GET TOGETHER WITH FAMILY AT SOMEONES HOUSE. IT REALLY WAS SOMETHING NICE TO GROW UP WITH. SAD,THAT SO MANY ARE GONE NOW.
Jennifer, I live just a few miles from you and I have never heard of this!
This kinds of gatherings are done very year on All Saints Day in the Philippines that it’s almost always a three-day holiday of sorts. Many families even spend the night there before November 1.
@Marion @Christine @Dboncan Is it safe to assume that we inherited this from our Spanish colonizers? :)
When my sister died at 17 it just seemed natural for us to want to continue to “be with her,” given her early age at death. On her birthday and anniversary of passing we would eat a picnic meal in the cemetery to celebrate her life and passing. This tradition only continued for a few years, but is one I fondly remember and believe helped the healing process for our family.
What a beautiful idea! But I hope that among your memories and celebrations among the buried, you also say fervent prayers for the holy souls in Purgatory. Rare are the souls who enter straight to Heaven!
This is morbid. I do not even visit my own parents’ graves. One, that’s not where they are, and two cemeteries are just creepy especially at night. I figure my body will spend enough time in one when I die anyway. Further where I live, eating and drinking is strictly prohibited. In fact, there are very strict restrictions on what can and cannot be done to a grave site. Vandalism is a HUGE major problem. I mean in the Founding Fathers cemetery the stones have been knocked down and broken…some of them go all the way back to 1656.
The definition of morbid means that there is an abnormal interest in subjects such as death. Getting together once a year to remember relatives who have passed on hardly constitutes an unhealthy interest in this subject. We have Chinese friends who honor their ancestors in just the same way every year. It is a joyful event.
My family did not do a picnic, but we frequently went to the cemetery on Sundays. My Dad in particular took care of my families grave sites and did beautiful plantings around the headstones. We often talked about our deceased family members and as a child I grew to know them quite well. They were not forgotten as I have seen happen in families that consider any discussion touching on the subject of death as morbid.i
I don’t know if anybody would be interested or not (I don’t know if this will even let me post a link, honestly), but here is a photo gallery I uploaded of our Decoration Sunday a few years ago. I think it will give you a taste of what it’s like here in Deep South: not a “party” and not “morbid” so much as a loving, thoughtful gathering of church and family. Jennifer, does yours look anything like this?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lonelypilgrim/sets/72157604886531038/with/2466956692/
Most Orthodox have such a custom that takes place in the Paschal season.
I’d be interested to know, Jennifer, what was your experience of the Cemetery Homecoming when you were atheist?
I’ve never heard or participated in a cemetery gathering (besides funerals), though I am from Texas…but it sounds like the Mexican tradition of Dia de los Muertos. We live in Japan now, and they also have a “picnic day” at their relatives’ tombs once a year where they eat and gather (though their religion is more ancestry based). Kind of interesting how different cultures celebrate similar things in similar ways.
How interesting! I’ve never heard of anything like this - I was raised in New Mexico.
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give The National Catholic Register permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.