Pohřební rituály na venkově
Funeral rituals in the countryside

Summary/Abstract: Dying, death and mourning is an integral part of the life of individuals, families, communities and society. All of them seek certain options and ways of dealing with death. These include legitimation hrough symbolic worlds and/or funeral rituals. The paper accentuates the importance of funeral rituals and their transformation in the Czech Republic. In the past decades, funeral rituals have been transformed quite dramatically. First, the usual religious (church) rituals were replaced by civil funerals, which were gradually abandoned after the so-called Velvet Revolution in 1989. Later, other, innovative and as yet unexplored rituals have been sought. Currently, atural or the so- called humanistic burials are used. There has also been a shift from funeral rituals as such to funerals without ceremonies, last goodbyes with urns, the so-called economic funerals (meeting the criterion of the lowest possible cost) or “social” funerals, i.e. funerals arranged by municipalities. However, traditional religious rituals persist in traditional communities and have not been significantly altered during the second half of the 20th century or at the beginning of the 21st century. The paper, which is of a rather anthropological and ethnographic nature, presents this present text using the example of the village of Štítná nad Vláří-Popov. Only the epidemiological measures related to the Covid-19 pandemic somewhat changed the local usual funeral rituals and introduced elements that had not been implemented much before, such as cremation.

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