Church beer festival is the best band name.
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The whole “cemeteries are sacred places for quiet contemplation and reflection and nothing else” is a very American point of view – not exclusively of course, but we are pretty extreme about it. In other places, cemeteries also function as parks and places for social events, especially ones that are attached to churches.
Also, while grave plots in the US are usually required to be maintained in perpetuity, that is not true in much of the world. Your gravesite is a place for your body to decompose for a few years and then it gets reused. Or they just keep stacking bodies on top of you.
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Come on. I’m sure many of those interred were dying for a beer.
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“Life is for the living”
-me
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They’re coming to get you Barbara.
If they were on my grave I wouldn’t care as long as they left it the way they found it but if family members didn’t want people on my grave they have a right to say so. Especially considering our graves cost us just a little south of 10 grand.
But if these were very old graves that had no living relatives, as long as they weren’t desecrated who cares.
My wife and her mom and grandma used to have picnics at the cemetery on their family member’s graves. As teenager we used to play hide and seek at an old abandoned cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700s but we never vandalized, just scared each other and drank beer. That cemetery has since been cleaned up and named a historical site.
I can see both sides.
This just might be our family outdoor double feature in a couple weeks or Rocky Horror, we’ll take a vote.
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My wife and her mom and grandma used to this when she was a child in the 60s. Whenever we’re near that cemetery we always stop by and say hey and wander around.
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If they’d done the fundraiser where my dear old father is buried they’d likely would have had to deal with him coming to surface looking for the keg. And a few lines from the still living to honor those resting below would have been a fine way of saying gone but not forgotten.
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Personally, I don’t have an issue with people being people in a graveyard but I do think you need to be respectful of the dead and of their families. For me it’s less about whether there are physical remains in that location but that the purpose of a cemetery and of a grave stone are to remember the dead, not just to conveniently dispose of them.
So beer in the cemetery would be totally fine by me. Laughter and music in a cemetery is totally fine by me. Using the grave of a person you don’t know as a beer table is not at all fine by me. It’s rude and disrespectful.
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Plus, I always like that addage that you die twice: once when you die, and again when your name is spoken for the last time. Spending some time around folks who passed in 1781 or whatever is humanizing, far as I’m concerned, and in any event as furthers the goal of this Church, a little focus on your mortality never hurt anyone.
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I live far from my family burial plots. So, if I’m near a graveyard I’ll stop in and say hi to the strangers, hoping that someone else far away is stopping by to keep my grandparents company.
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My grandfather’s ashes were spread in the Bow River, which makes it a convenient place to say hello.
The number of names from our generation(s) that will be remembered >1000 years from now is less than 100. I have no delusion that I’ll be one of them, even amongst any descendants I might have. (FWIW* my family tree goes back about 700 years, but there are only about 2 people in my extended family who give a damn about it).
*Not much
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And some number died because they drank something other than beer. A brewed or distilled beverage was the safe choice in the early days of urbanization, before the days of effective mass potable water treatment.
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The person died in 18th century nobody remembers them.
What if it was Trump’s grave? Or Bannon? What if it was beer already “processed”? And what if it were spilled instead of drunk?
So many questions.
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I was thinking Double Dead Guy myself. Or anything from Mort Subite.
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You pay your whole life to occupy ground either by rent or property tax. However, after you die one payment gives you the right to your grave site for the rest of time. wtf
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It’s actually one of the nicer things about church. But even they can rarely keep that ‘perpetual’ promise.
I’ve made it a point to visit each of the cemeteries around my town, one a year, spreading out over the years. It’s a way to connect myself to where I live, getting a sense of how long the town has been here. My family once vacationed in North Carolina to see where my father’s family came from, and we actually located the grave of our eldest paternal American ancestor. Unfortunately we don’t know how he came to America other than a rumor that he rode a Scottish ship, even though he was English. His Revolutionary War pension was a chunk of North Carolina large for his kids to eventually establish their own small town. I often wonder how many others in these cemeteries have tales like that.
My great grandparents died long before I was born. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect their memory. When we have our annual decoration service, we remember and put flowers on graves of our ancestors whether they died recently or whether they are only remembered by a name on a family tree.
Having a personal memory of someone isn’t the only reason to be respectful of them.
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