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Dedicating the Grave, and the Festival That Does Not Exist

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Dedicating the Grave, and the Festival That Does Not Exist

Two details distinguish the Latter-day Saint handling of death from the Christian traditions around it.

The first is at the graveside. After the service the family gathers at the grave and a man holding the Melchizedek priesthood, ordinarily a son or a grandson, dedicates it. The church treats this as an ordinance rather than as a prayer, performed by priesthood authority, and it asks that the ground be dedicated as a resting place and that it be protected until the resurrection. It takes under a minute and it is the last thing done. Where no priesthood holder is present, a prayer is offered instead and the distinction is observed carefully.

The second is an absence. A person who received the temple endowment is buried in the white temple clothing worn in that ordinance, dressed by family members, an act the church treats as private and which the atlas does not describe further.

And the movement holds no annual festival of the dead. There is no All Souls, no Obon, no Qingming, no Day of the Dead, and no fixed day on which Latter-day Saints go to the graves. That is unusual among Christian traditions and it is not an oversight. The work that other traditions concentrate into one day of the year is done continuously instead, in the temples, by proxy ordinance, on behalf of people the family has identified by name. Recording the absence, and the reason for it, is more useful than leaving a gap where a festival would be.

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