When Americans picnicked in cemeteries • Hacker News Board

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#41

Post by 7thaccount » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 12:27 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #37

7thaccount wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two enormous cemeteries on either side of my neighborhood. However where I live, just going for a walk there would be considered disrespectful. It's outdated in my opinion. Cemeteries are a terrible waste of space and horrible for the environment too. Like you said, go ahead and have a beautiful ceremony. I've told my wife to cremate me or turn me into one of those tree things that people are talking about now…

Cremation also makes a significant carbon footprint, afaik. Best eco way to get rid of the body is to drop it to the sea floor.

I've heard that too. Running the furnace likely consumes a fair amount of electricity, but I think that's a non problem with high renewables. Just don't run during peak. Is the carbon footprint that bad from the conversation to ashes process? If so, yeah, maybe ocean is best.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#42

Post by lm28469 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 12:31 PM UTC

camillomiller wrote: post #13

EdwardDiego wrote: post #12

I've had some lovely picnics in beautiful cemeteries in Germany, they're often walled, which dramatically reduces traffic noise, and resemble botanical gardens with their mixture of trees and flowering shrubs, in contrast to the "lawn with headstones" I'm familiar with in New Zealand. They're real sanctuaries in busy cities.

Confirmed. In Berlin we have some really beautiful ones. If you want to read a book in a park in perfect quiet they’re the right place.

If you're into that kind of stuff I'd recommend taking the train to Potsdam and visit the suedwestkirchhof (easily accessible by bus), it's especially nice in winter when it snows

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#43

Post by pif » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 12:48 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #40

pif wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing "All Saints' Day" (November, 1st [1]) with "All Souls' Day" (November, 2nd [2]). In Italy as well, people will go to cemeteries on the 1st, because it's a bank holiday, but the celebrations if for the 2nd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls%27_Day

Uhm.....not sure how I'm confusing the two? Can you explain please? In Poland "all saints day"(and I say "all saints" because that's literally what "wszystkich świętych" means) is definitely celebrated on the 1st of November, regardless of what day that is. Nothing is celebrated on the 2nd of November. Edit: In fact, in that Wiki article that you linked for "all saints day", click on "Polski" in the bottom left corne…

I see. From the other comments, I'd say at least in Spain it works like in Italy, and it is best described by the first sentences of the two Wikipedia articles:

All Saints' Day, also known as All Hallows' Day, Hallowmas, the Feast of All Saints, or Solemnity of All Saints, is a Christian solemnity celebrated in honour of all the saints of the church, whether they are known or unknown.

All Souls' Day, also known as the Commemoration of All the Faithful Departed and the Day of the Dead, is a day of prayer and remembrance for the souls of those who have died, which is observed by Latin Catholics and other Christian denominations annually on November 2.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#44

Post by HKH2 » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 1:29 PM UTC

secondaryacct wrote: post #30

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a Chinese holiday, Qingming ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qingming_Festival ), devoted to caring for ancestors' graves. Obviously, there is heavy cemetery traffic on that day. The major ritual involves burning (fake) money for the deceased to use in the afterlife, but food offerings are also made. The food is not burned - it is recovered and eaten by normal living people, though I don't know whether people…

They do eat there, here in Hong Kong it's even funny: people dont go all at the same time and end up putting their trash on other people's grave, making the entire cemetary a mess on the day. Weirdly, they also are absolutely insanely paranoid about have a view of the cemetary from their appartment: I know me and my wife lived in one such (cheap as a consequence) flat, and her parents were quite mad. When we left, th…

I remember someone telling me that they put a mirror facing the window to reflect the [negative energy] away.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#45

Post by cbsks » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 1:38 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #5

We watch movies at them in LA

I recently went to a concert there! https://hollywoodforever.com/

I was expecting the concert to be held away from the graves, but no, there were tombstones directly behind the audience. It was a little unnerving.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#46

Post by NikolaeVarius » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 1:45 PM UTC

I've always thought that much of modern American(western?) culture is way too offput by graveyards. I've always like Heideggers thoughts on this subject.

> In a lecture in 1961, when he was asked how we might recover authenticity, Heidegger replied, in quite short fashion, that we should simply aim to spend more time in graveyards.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#47

Post by Toutouxc » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #40

pif wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are confusing "All Saints' Day" (November, 1st [1]) with "All Souls' Day" (November, 2nd [2]). In Italy as well, people will go to cemeteries on the 1st, because it's a bank holiday, but the celebrations if for the 2nd. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Saints%27_Day [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls%27_Day

Uhm.....not sure how I'm confusing the two? Can you explain please? In Poland "all saints day"(and I say "all saints" because that's literally what "wszystkich świętych" means) is definitely celebrated on the 1st of November, regardless of what day that is. Nothing is celebrated on the 2nd of November. Edit: In fact, in that Wiki article that you linked for "all saints day", click on "Polski" in the bottom left corne…

That's interesting, across the border, in the Czech Republic, we also celebrate "dušičky" (meaning "souls") on the 2nd, and the same holiday even has a Polish name "zaduszki", which sounds really similar to our name, so I'd expect it to be a thing, because of the cultural similarities between the countries.

https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaduszki

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#48

Post by Toutouxc » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 2:44 PM UTC

I wish this was a thing again. I spent most of my childhood living at a cemetery (it was my dad's side job to mow the lawns, open and close the gates, keep the water running etc., and we lived in a house right at the gate) and I always felt like the place wasn't dead because of the people buried there, but because we made it that way. We transformed what was essentially a park with tombstones reminding us of our loved ones into a weird, ominous, liminal space.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#49

Post by randdusing » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

cafard wrote: post #23

wyclif wrote: post #19

Filipinos still do it! Usually during their version of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) which we in the west call All Saints Day and they call Araw ng mga Yumao.

Pedantry: Día de los Muertos is All Souls Day, November 2, the day after All Saints.

Are you sure about that? My Mexican relatives celebrate it on November 1st.

Re: When Americans picnicked in cemeteries

#50

Post by jerf » Wed, Oct 20, 2021, 4:00 PM UTC

beckman466 wrote: post #22

tokai wrote: post #21

In Copenhagen, Denmark the municipality is actively encouraging recreational use of the cities cemeteries. As they write "The cemetery is also for the living". Everything else seems like a waste of space imo. Respect and leisure ain't orthogonal. https://www.kk.dk/kirkegaarde

love that. yes some are making it out to be something disrespectful somehow. i also would prefer if cemeteries were converted to parks to be green spaces available to all. spots in cemeteries are also usually only affordable for the propertied class too. for many in the working class they're not viable. do our cities really need to reserve and block off sizable physical spaces for decades, when we have a housing cris…

"yes some are making it out to be something disrespectful somehow."

"Some" are probably ignorant of the fact that cemeteries have been routinely moved in Western societies for centuries. It's not a new thing, and there are cultural procedures for doing it respectfully. It is also in a different sense a tradition to argue about who is going to pay for those procedures since they aren't the cheapest, but that's a separate matter.

So, your question can be given a concrete answer: No, we aren't stuck with cemeteries forever in the place they were plopped down decades ago. That is a present reality, not something we have to aspire to.