The Emergence of A New Trend - The Funeral Urn

What is a funeral urn? The funeral urn is a receptacle, which is meant to hold the ashes that result following the cremation of a human body. This practice is slowly emerging because most of the cemeteries are overcrowded, and buying a new gravesite is expensive beyond belief. The funeral urn usually solves this problem because it is small and does not need to be buried.

Many people prefer to transfer the ashes into a highly decorative urn and keep it at home. Others enter the urn into burial vaults specially meant for this purpose, while others have it buried in a grave. The funeral urn burial vaults as well as ordinary graves allow for commemorative placards and head stone, respectively where an epitaph can be written in the memory of the deceased.

The Advantages of a Funeral Urn

Though cremation or burial is a personal choice based on individual beliefs and religious orientation, the funeral urn is gradually emerging as a preferred way of body disposal because of many factors:

1. Economic factors - buying a casket is far more expensive than buying an urn and for those who are already financially challenged, this could be a welcome alternative option

2. Availability of place factors - with the population explosion the cemeteries are over-burdened and hence many people find it difficult to buy a suitable place; hence, the alternative of purchasing a space in the urn burial vault becomes a better way out

3. Grief factor - when you put the ashes in the urn, you have a choice of (i) burying it in the cemetery just as you would have buried a casket - complete with head stone and all the other requirements, (ii) burying it in the urn vault where you could write a small memorial placard, (iii) take the urn home and keep on the mantle or any other place you choose to until you decide to scatter the ashes in some place where your dear one would have loved to be.

4. Convenience factor - though this is the least important factor to be considered by the family, it is still there; the cremation is faster, cheaper and it gives you back the ashes - which somehow becomes an emotional prop for many who choose to keep the urn with the ashes at home.

5. Religious factor - cremation was practiced by Roman Christians as long ago as the 6th-7th century. Though some people believe that the deceased should be buried so he/she can wait for the call of Jesus at the end of the world, the lack of space has compromised on this aspect. Instead it allows the body to be transformed into ashes so it can buried in urn vault and avoid gravesite acquisition, which is become more and more an impossible task.