The students of MedNeuro are multinational and so diverse are their ways of celebrating easter and other festivities. Betty Jurek had a look of how beginning and end of life are celebrated around the globe.
The Beginning…
When a baby is born, parents are usually overwhelmed with emotions, and only want the best for their child. But the interpretation of what “the best” is also depends on the parents’ nationality and can be somewhat, let’s say, "unique".
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| Baptism by keskieve via pixabay |
Sifudu Smoke
This ritual is practiced in Nigeria and means “passing baby through smoke”. Between the third and fourteenth day after birth, leaves from a Sifudu tree are burnt, causing a pungent smoke that is irritating to the mouth and eyes. The baby is held head downwards into this smoke several times, in the belief that this prevents the child from being frightened, timid or shy [1].
Precious Saliva
An interesting way to give blessings to a baby is practiced by the Wolof people in Mauritania. They believe that saliva can retain words so the women spit into the baby’s face while men spit into the baby’s ear. To ensure that the blessing works, they rub the saliva all over its head [1].
Recycled Wedding Cake
In comparison to applying saliva onto Mauritanian babies, Irish babies seem to have better luck. Couples freeze the top tier of their wedding cake and re-use it for the christening of their first baby. Some crumbs are sprinkled over the baby’s head and if the couples have leftovers from their wedding champagne, this will also be used to wet the baby’s head for good luck [1]. Cheers!
Placenta Power
In contrast to many animal species, eating up the placenta following delivery is a somewhat unusual practice for humans. Proponents of human placentophagy claim that eating their own placenta results in better mood, increased energy and lactation although there is no study that gives evidence for a causal effect. Dried placenta is also commonly used in Chinese traditional medicine to treat infertility, impotence and other conditions [2].
Lithuanian Baby Race
Every year on International Children’s Day (June 1st), Lithuanian toddlers compete in a race where they have to crawl a 5-meter carpet to their mothers as fast as they can. All participants seem to have great fun, and the winner this year crawled the distance within 11 seconds [3].
Toddler Tossing
This ritual may be the scariest one for outsiders. At an annual festival in India, babies and toddlers are tossed from a 15-meter high tower, right onto a landing sheet. Despite appearing to be a traumatic experience for the babies, it is supposed to give luck, health and prosperity to the child [4].
…And The End
Depending on our spiritual or religious backgrounds, we see death as either the end of life or as some sort of transition. Every people has its own way of dealing with death and grief. Some of them seem very creative, others more disturbing.
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| fantasy coffin by Regula Tschumi via Wikimedia Commons |
Fantasy Coffins
This interesting tradition from southern Ghana is based on the belief that life continues after death the same way as it was before. Therefore, people make individual, colorful coffins that often reflect the dead person’s profession or passion, which is thought to allow them to start the afterlife as conveniently as possible [5]. From a boat to a piano to a pack of cigarettes, everything is possible.
Death Beads
Space in graveyards in South Korea is running out, so a law was passed in 2000 mandating that people who get buried need to be removed 60 years later. This crisis led to an invention which has gained popularity during the last decade: Death beads. These turquoise beads are generated by melting the cremated ashes at ultrahigh temperatures [6]. In this way, the beloved one can be kept at home “forever”.
Consuming Grief
As an act of compassion, some tribes in South America, Africa and India used to eat their deceased family members. As a part of the grieving process, the Wari’ people in Brazil ate the complete corpse whereas other tribes, like the Amahuaca Indians, made some sort of gruel out of the ground bones and corn [7].
Death is Not the End
In contrast to Western culture, members of the Toraja ethnic group in Indonesia are buried weeks, months or even years after they pass away. For the Toraja, death is a gradual process toward the afterlife. Therefore, the deceased is wrapped in several layers of cloth and kept in a special room in the family’s home. They are still part of family life, are symbolically fed and taken out every once in a while. At the actual funeral, the social status of the deceased is reflected in the numbers of sacrificed chickens and water buffaloes [8].
Sky Burial
This special form of funeral is practiced in different regions of Asia (e.g., Tibet, Mongolia), where people practice Vajrayna Buddhism. A monk or a rogyapas (body-breaker) prepares the dead body (by taking out the organs) and places it on a mountaintop to return the body to nature. Most of the time, this means that the dead body will be devoured by vultures to the bone. The bones are then ground with a special sort of flour and given to crows and hawks that wait until the vultures have departed [9]. This way, the deceased merges with the wind.
[1] http://glblctzn.me/2ewEsaT
[2] http://bit.ly/2ewE5Ng
[3] http://bit.ly/2ewEtLS
[4] http://dailym.ai/2eo6Wbq
[5] http://bit.ly/2ewFl39
[6] http://lat.ms/2eo69Ho
[7] http://bit.ly/2ewEfo0
[8] http://bit.ly/2enT6Wx
[9] http://bit.ly/2eo70I6
by Betty Jurek, PhD Student AG Prüß
This article originally appeared 2016 in CNS Volume 9, Issue 4, From Cradle to Grave in the Brain
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