Last Saturday, my colleagues at the National Post produced a special issue which looked at the changing cultural, religious, political and technological aspects of death. It ran the Saturday before Halloween as part of the odd cultural phenomenon of extending Halloween backwards, making the entire month of October as a sort of secular advent for the feast of death. In a more liturgically conversant time, the feature would have run this Saturday, on All Souls Day, when we pray for the dead who, being in need of our prayers, are by definition, alive — enjoying a life that is changed, not ended.

The liturgical sensibility is restrained and modest. Death must be thought about, but it cannot dominate one’s thinking. The ambient culture makes both mistakes. There is the transformation of funeral rituals from occasions to mourn the dead into occasions of pretending that they haven’t died. The funeral has been replaced in many places by a sort of retirement dinner, featuring sentimental and silly stories, only lacking sincere best wishes for the future. On the other hand, popular culture — which is rarely restrained or modest — has a certain fixation with death.