funeral rites

Noun

funeral rite (plural funeral rites)

1. A custom or ceremony pertaining to the recently dead, such as a funeral, public burial, or the Greek custom of breaking clayen vessels on the grave or in front of the deceased's house.
   • Although a secular funeral rite has been performed for public figures from the time of the Revolution, efforts to establish it for ordinary Soviet citizens have begun relatively late, that is from the middle sixties to the early seventies onwards. Up to then ritual specialists had shied away from...1981, Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers: Ritual in Industrial Society - the Soviet Case, →ISBN

   Synonyms:

   obsequy