The Quiet Erosion of Our Collective Relationship with Ceremony

5/20/2026

My earliest memories of funeral service are rooted firmly in burial. Growing up in Michigan in the 1970s, in a Midwestern, conservative Protestant family, every funeral I attended followed a familiar and unquestioned pattern of visitation, service, procession, and burial. Cremation was not part of my childhood vocabulary around death, nor was it part of the religious or cultural framework that shaped how my family understood loss.

Even when I entered mortuary school in 1990, cremation remained largely peripheral in my education. It was discussed, certainly, but it was not central to how funeral service was framed or practiced. That changed almost immediately after graduation.

Shifting Expectations

My first position out of mortuary school brought me to Boulder, Colorado, a community that, in the early 1990s, was already well ahead of the rest of the country in its embrace of cremation, with rates exceeding 60 percent. I was making cremation arrangements almost daily, a stark contrast to the burial-centric model that had shaped both my upbringing and much of my formal training. While I had been prepared for the traditions of funeral service—formality, continuity, and established ritual—it was immediately clear that I was practicing in a place where expectations around death, ceremony, and professional identity were already shifting.

What is important to note, however, is that cremation at that time did not yet mean the absence of ceremony. Families choosing cremation in the early 1990s in Boulder often still opted for embalming, a visitation, and a service with the body present. Cremation typically occurred after the service, with the urn either returned to the family or interred in a local cemetery. In many ways, cremation functioned less as a replacement for traditional funeral service and more as an adaptation within it.

“Am I allowed to teach cremation?”

It was not until several years later, during my early career as an educator and Department Chair of the Mortuary Science Program at Arapahoe Community College, that I fully grasped just how progressive that initial professional environment had been. In the mid-1990s, while hiring a part-time instructor, I encountered a question that stopped me short. I was asked, “Am I allowed to teach cremation?”

That question revealed how differently cremation was still viewed across the country, where it remained optional, controversial, or secondary in funeral education. In that moment, it became clear to me that teaching about cremation wasn’t simply permitted, it was expected.

I had entered the profession at the leading edge of a shift that funeral service as a whole was only beginning to confront.

Grief does not respond to efficiency

Today, as cremation has become widely accepted, often expected, I find myself holding a different concern. Alongside its normalization, I have noticed the quiet erosion of our collective relationship with ceremony. As a society, we have stepped away from ritual across nearly every stage of life. Many people no longer participate in graduation ceremonies. Weddings are delayed, minimized, or bypassed altogether. Baptisms and other rites of passage that once marked transition and belonging are increasingly absent. Funeral service has not been singled out for abandonment; rather, it reflects a broader cultural retreat from ceremony in general. When these rituals disappear, we lose more than tradition, we lose shared moments of acknowledgment and meaning. And that makes me deeply sad.

Ceremony matters because ritual gives shape to transition. It creates space for acknowledgment, for witness, and for meaning. It allows us to pause long enough to recognize that something irreversible has occurred. When we lose these markers, we do not eliminate grief; we simply make it harder to carry.

During the COVID pandemic, I shared these concerns in an interview with a national publication, specifically around the growing number of families selecting immediate, non-ceremonial cremation. My worry, then as now, is rooted in a misunderstanding I encounter far too often: the belief that if there is no viewing, no service, no formal acknowledgment, no ceremony, the process of grief will be easier, or at least over more quickly. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Burying someone does not make grief last longer, and cremating someone does not help a person reach “the other side” of grief faster. Grief does not respond to efficiency. What ceremony and ritual offer are not delay, but depth—an opportunity to feel the weight of loss in a supported, intentional way. Ceremony does not prolong grief, it helps contain it. When families are implicitly or explicitly encouraged to bypass that process, they may later discover that what was deferred has not disappeared.

Adaptation Not Rejection

At the same time, cremation has continued to cross generational and cultural lines, even within my own family. In the early 1990s, when a more progressive family member first expressed a desire to be cremated, the choice felt notable and unconventional. Today, however, an increasing number of family members, many shaped by more traditional expectations, have expressed their preference for cremation, often with their urns buried in a cemetery rather than choosing a full casketed burial. What once felt unconventional has become a thoughtful adaptation of tradition rather than a rejection of it.

This evolution points to what I believe is one of the profession’s greatest challenges moving forward. Funeral directors must consistently communicate the value of ceremony, of ritual, and of what I often describe as presenting the gift of a final goodbye, while honoring family choice and autonomy. The challenge lies in offering options without coercion and guidance without pressure. Respecting choice does not mean withholding information. It means engaging more deeply, asking better questions, presenting meaningful options, and clearly communicating the value of ceremony without insisting upon it.

In many cultures where cremation is the norm, ritual remains inseparable from the process. The American tendency to remove ceremony entirely from cremation raises important questions about what we may be losing in the name of perceived simplicity and what future generations may inherit if the value of ceremony continues to diminish.

As cremation marks its 150-year history in the United States, the path forward is not about choosing between tradition and change. It is about remembering why funeral service exists in the first place: to help families acknowledge loss, honor life, and find footing in the aftermath of death. Cremation, when thoughtfully integrated with ceremony and ritual, has the capacity to do exactly that. The responsibility now rests with the profession to ensure that this understanding is not lost.

This post oritinally appeared in The Cremationist, Vol. 62, Issue 1. Members can read this article and get more inspiration in The Cremationist archive. Not a member? Consider joining your business today!

Want more from Martha? This August, she'll take the CANA Convention stage to discuss AI in Funeral Service: Ethics, Compassion, and Professional Judgment so you can see how to approach AI as a support tool without compromising compassion, trust, or professional judgment. See what else we have planned and register for CANA's 108th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention today!

Martha Thayer is a presenter, trainer, and online curriculum designer whose work is grounded in longstanding professional practice. She is the founder of Mortuary Training, where she and her team develop modern, practice-focused learning programs for funeral service professionals and organizations nationwide.

Martha received Emeritus status from Arapahoe Community College in Littleton, Colorado, after teaching and serving as Chair of the Mortuary Science Department for over 25 years. In 1999, she pioneered the first fully accredited online mortuary science curriculum in the United States, establishing her as an early leader in distance education for funeral service professionals.

What a Fictional HBR Case Study Reveals About the Real Work of Today’s Death‑Care Professionals

5/6/2026

Harvard Business Review recently published a fictional case study about a funeral company — Monteverde Memorial Group — at a crossroads. In the scenario, the leadership team is debating whether to shift their business model in response to changing consumer expectations, rising cremation rates, and internal questions about culture, staffing, and long‑term strategy. The company isn’t real — but the pressures, tensions, and choices certainly are.

And that’s what makes the case study worth our attention.

Even in fictional form, it recognizes something funeral directors, cemeterians, and cremation professionals have long understood: this profession is constantly adapting. Consumer needs evolve. Cultural norms shift. Cremation continues to rise — with CANA’s State Cremation Rate Milestone Report predicting cremation will be the preferred form of disposition in every U.S. state by 2033. These changes don’t just alter the numbers; they reshape how we talk with families, how we design services, and how we think about the future of our organizations.

The Memorial Group in the Mirror

While the pandemic didn’t influence the cremation rate, this case study shows how the crisis accelerated answers to questions Monteverde Memorial Group posed for their five-year growth plan. Forces beyond the disease – namely land costs and cremation growth – came into focus more quickly.

We see the case study’s executive grapple with his own negative feelings about cremation and confront the shifting consumer values with which he disagrees.

In our own business reflections, the case study raises questions like:

How do we adapt to what families want today?
How do we communicate value when “meaningful” looks different for every family?
How do we balance tradition with innovation?
How do we support staff in a profession built on emotional labor?
How do we evolve our business models without losing the heart of what we do?

If you’ve wrestled with any of these questions — and most professionals in death care have — you’re already living the strategic conversations that business schools consider worth teaching.

Easier Said Than Done

At the end of the case study, the fictional experts offer recommendations about listening deeply to families, clarifying your value proposition, investing in staff well‑being, and staying adaptable in the face of cultural change. These aren’t abstract business theories. They’re the same principles that guide strong, community‑rooted death‑care organizations every day.

Our members don’t need a fictional company to tell them what’s changing. They see it when a family chooses a gathering in a hotel ballroom instead of a chapel. They see it when someone plans a living funeral and feels that the ceremony they held in life met their needs. They see it when families talk about value — not just price — and make choices that reflect their priorities, not tradition.

Cemeterians see it in the growing demand for flexible memorialization options. Cremation professionals see it in the questions about new disposition methods and witness cremation. Funeral directors see it in the desire for personalization, simplicity, or new kinds of gathering spaces.

Turning Questions Into Strategy

These are the real world decisions shaping the future of death care. And they’re the conversations our members have been leading long before this HBR case study.

They’re also the questions worth talking about — openly, honestly, and together. Every firm is wrestling with its own version of “What should our cremation strategy look like?” Some are rethinking service offerings. Some are exploring new partnerships or spaces. Some are trying to articulate value in ways that resonate with today’s families. And many are simply trying to figure out where to begin.

CANA exists for exactly these conversations. Our community is a place where professionals compare notes, share dilemmas, test ideas, and learn from one another’s experience. If the themes raised in the case study echo challenges in your own business — or spark new questions — we want to hear them. Your insights, your uncertainties, and your strategies are part of the collective wisdom that strengthens this profession.

As cremation becomes the preferred choice nationwide, the need for thoughtful dialogue and shared learning only grows. CANA’s mission is to be the trusted authority and educator on all aspects of cremation — and that includes helping you shape the plans, policies, and practices that will carry your organization forward.

The HBR case study may be fictional, but the questions it raises are real — and our members are already answering them with creativity, compassion, and clarity. That’s something worth celebrating.

For more than 105 years, CANA has created space for professionals to share what’s working, what’s changing, and what’s keeping them up at night. That longevity isn’t an accident — it’s proof that when cremation professionals, funeral directors, and cemeterians come together, the profession moves forward.

If the questions raised in this piece are ones you’re wrestling with too, CANA's 108th Annual Convention this August is designed for exactly these conversations. It’s where people compare notes, test ideas, and build strategies they can take home. We wouldn’t ask you to step away from your business in the middle of August without good reason — and the reason is simple: the conversations happening there help shape the future of cremation care.

We hope you’ll join us in Minneapolis this August 12-14. See what we have planned and register: cremationassociation.org/CANA26

The Quiet Erosion of Our Collective Relationship with Ceremony

Shifting Expectations

“Am I allowed to teach cremation?”

Grief does not respond to efficiency

Adaptation Not Rejection

What a Fictional HBR Case Study Reveals About the Real Work of Today’s Death‑Care Professionals

The Memorial Group in the Mirror

Easier Said Than Done

Turning Questions Into Strategy

The Cremation Logs Blog

Categories

Archives

Quick Links