Grief is a natural and universal experience. Kübler-Ross classified the experience of grief into five stages, including: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (Clarke, 2023). But the phenomenon of grief is so much more than that. It is a truly profound experience that disrupts the natural course of life and penetrates every aspect of an individual’s psyche.
Yet, it is not only an individual experience; grief reverberates through families, groups, societies and cultures. The collective experience of grief has allowed it to be shaped by culture, intertwining such a deeply painful experience with rituals, traditions and practices that not only help absolve one of their grief but also adapt to a new life. The following article aims to understand the intertwined nature of culture and mourning while exploring its significance.
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What is Cultural Mourning?
Cultural mourning is an example of how culture can impact the experience of grief and even help individuals cope with loss. It refers to the variety of ways in which societies express grief and commemorate the dead, including specific rituals, beliefs, and practices that shape the experience of loss (Kagawa-Singer, 1998). It essentially provides a framework based on social, cultural and religious literature to understand death and even process it. It allows the grief of loss to be heard, validated and shared by those around one.
Since culture plays such a vital role in the process of mourning, traditions and rituals, which are practised, will differ with each culture. While some societies will promote a longer duration of mourning with elaborate rituals and loud expressions of sorrow, other societies will promote a short period of mourning with silence and meditation followed by q quick return to daily life activities. While all practices of cultural mourning differ greatly, the main aim remains to provide the bereaved with a pathway to process loss, stand strong even in the face of death and find support amongst community members.
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Some Rituals Followed Around The World Include
- Hindu Tradition: In this culture, since death is only a part of the soul’s journey towards reincarnation, mourning rituals observe a 13-day period of rituals to order the departed and support the soul’s transition (Pallis & A, 2025).
- Christian Tradition: Wakes, funerals and memorial services characterise the cultural mourning rituals of the Christian Tradition. They celebrate the life of those who have passed with prayers, hymns, flowers and more while allowing the loved ones to share their grief with the community (Staff, 2025).
- Nordic Traditions: Many cultures use water as burial grounds, allowing the dead to board “death ships” along a river or out in the ocean. To make their journey comfortable, loved ones will often spend time gathering food, meat and other objects favoured by the deceased to take with them (Newcomb & Tim, 2025).
- South Korean Traditions: Funerals last three days when the mourning family keeps their house open for relatives and friends to come, share a drink and a meal, while sharing the memories of the deceased. It aims to distract the family and instil a sense of support for them (Adams, 2024).
- Hispanic Traditions: Mourning practices from these cultures include walking funeral processions with a band playing, fireworks, making home altars for deceased spirits with food and water and abstaining from media (Hidalgo et al., 2020).
Read More: What Different Cultures Teach Us About Healthy Grieving
Role of Cultural Mourning
Current literature, which focuses on the psychological understanding of grief, suggests that it encompasses the following processes: finding meaning in death, altered biopsychosocial needs, and the metamorphosis of the relationship between the living and the deceased (Klass & Steffen, 2017).
The anthropological approach to grief suggests that these processes, underlined by the psychological understanding of grief, are shaped by “social, cultural, religious, economic, political, and historical context” (Silverman et al., 2020). This suggests that cultural mourning goes beyond simple rituals and traditions, but rather serves profound psychological functions that help individuals and communities navigate the tempestuous waters of loss.
Read More: Stages of Grief
1. Expression of Grief
Many individuals believe that grief must be contained privately and dealt with alone. However, the practice of cultural mourning allows individuals to express their grief with others. It permits a healthy output of grief, which is heard and understood by family members, friends, community, and society. The expression can take multiple forms, such as lamentation, chanting, storytelling, singing, and more, but the process of its acknowledgement and validation helps the grieving individual avoid the suppression of grief. Such rituals also helped normalise grief, rather than making an individual feel like they are weak for experiencing such profound sadness.
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2. Regain Control in Chaos
Cultural mourning usually has stages and prescribed timelines that strictly define the process of grief. By engaging in rituals, spells of helplessness are alleviated as the individual can latch onto a predictable structure. It helps grieving individuals to find control amongst the chaos of loss. Instead of feeling lost in the sea of grief, cultural mourning will allow individuals to regain a sense of control in their lives by dictating behaviours that they must indulge in at specific intervals (Norton & Gino, 2013).
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3. Social Support
Another aspect that is prominent in cultural mourning is that the grieving process of losing a loved one becomes a community event rather than a private one. Different gatherings conducted by various cultures, including lake meetings, prayer meetings, memorial meetings, funerals, and so on, provide an avenue for family members, friends, and the general community to come together to support the family of the deceased.
This would help dispel the feeling of being abandoned by the grieving and assure them that they are not alone at this very hard moment. Research also suggests that larger funerals increase the psychosocial support for the braved, and even reduce the regrets faced by them (Becker et al., 2022).
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4. Return to Daily Life
Some cultural mourning practices lay a lot of emphasis on the bereaved’s return to normal daily life. They only observe the morning period for a restricted amount of time and focus largely on encouraging individuals to resume life and help ease the process for them.
5. Maintaining Relationships with the Deceased
The main focus of grief is not necessarily to dissolve the ties that were once shared with deceased loved ones. The theory of continuing bonds posits that continuing a relationship with the deceased by way of memories, illusions, behaviours, ideas, and so on could help an individual adapt to the loss (Hewson et al., 2023). Essentially, maintaining the relationship with the deceased will help an individual reconstruct their reality and accordingly form their identity to adapt to the new environment (Hewson et al., 2023). The same is practised through cultural mourning, which encourages observance of the death anniversary, memorial acts, and even offerings to the deceased.
6. Evading Prolonged Grief
When dealing with such profound loss, it is very common for mental illnesses to manifest. Mental disorders, which include prolonged grief disorder, major depressive disorder, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, and more, are often related to the loss of a loved one (Killikelly et al., 2025). However, engaging in cultural morning rituals can help an individual effectively deal with their grief and prevent an individual’s path towards mental illnesses (The Psychological Impact of Funeral Rites: How Rituals Ai. . ., 2025).
7. Understand Death
Since cultural mourning depends greatly on social, cultural and religious texts, they explain the significance of the practices they encourage. Upon becoming familiar with these texts, an individual can understand how death is treated in their culture. It also helps individuals truly understand the meaning of death according to their cultural values and beliefs. Understanding death only helps an individual deal with the loss of a loved one, as it informs them of the future of the deceased. While different cultures opt for differing explanations of death, almost all suggest that the deceased will be safe and in a better place.
Absence of Cultural Mourning
Literature has focused on the importance of cultural mourning in easing the process of bereavement for family members and friends. Due to the global pandemic of COVID-19, research was also able to establish the impact of an absence of death rituals on the grieving process.
Since COVID-19 was a major adversity, which involved processes such as social distancing and isolation of the infected, those who succumbed to the virus were not able to receive proper funerals, and their families were not able to engage in cultural mourning.
Research suggests that in the absence of such rituals during the time of the pandemic, the bereavement process of the families was greatly altered and can be linked to greater manifestation of mental illnesses (Burrell & Selman, 2020). Research also suggests that they believed they were experiencing profound feelings of incompleteness and helplessness for not being able to bid farewell to their loved ones, along with deep regret (Godawat & Ghosh, 2023). The absence of cultural mourning worsens an individual’s experience of grief and makes it difficult for them to walk the path from denial to acceptance.
Read More: Cultural Mourning: The Hidden Psychological Impact of Losing Heritage
Conclusion
Cultural mourning intertwines the experience of grief with the community. And while different cultures have vastly differing rituals of cultural mourning, research suggests that in totality, these rituals are extremely significant for those who have been left behind. By providing an outlet for healthy expression of grief and community support, cultural mourning helps an individual process death and even understand it. It’s rituals, traditions, and beliefs, not only help an individual return to daily life and adapt to their loss, but also help them to maintain a relationship with the deceased. Cultural morning acts as a psychological anchor that supports the bereaved as they process their loss.
FAQs
1. Is any culture’s mourning ritual better than the others?
No, cultural morning rituals differ greatly, and none of them are considered to be the absolute best or better than the others. These rituals are based on differing beliefs, traditions, and scriptures that align with specific cultures and resonate with different communities. Depending upon an individual’s beliefs, values, and cultural background, they may be best suited towards a specific culture’s mourning rituals. However, that does not deem any ritual better than the other. Especially since mourning and grief are extremely personal experiences that have been woven into society.
2. Can Technology help with cultural mourning?
Since technology has become so deeply integrated into society, it can also help with the process of cultural mourning. It has been seen worldwide that digital spaces are being held for the deceased. Individuals who are in different parts of the world, but were close to the deceased, are sharing their emotions, experiences, and memories with them and their family. This helps those left behind cope with their grief better.
3. Can someone who doesn’t believe in religion take part in cultural mourning?
Any individual can take part in cultural mourning because it is not necessarily tied to religion. Many cultural rituals are based on scriptures, but they serve as memorial services and aid the processing of grief.
References +
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Becker, C., Taniyama, Y., Kondo-Arita, M., Sasaki, N., Yamada, S., & Yamamoto, K. (2022). How funerals mediate the distraught social impact of grief: Qualitative analysis of open-ended responses to a national survey in Japan. SSM – Mental Health, 2, 100169. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmmh.2022.100169
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