non-religious memorial "service"

[Mark Mandel]

I'm sure I've seen it before, in announcements and reports. But without
attending the event, or reading or hearing a description in some detail, I
wouldn't have known that it had no religious content.

And, thinking of that, I wouldn't expect an announcement to specify
explicitly that the service was non-religious, so how would I know when a
"service" was nonreligious? The only memorial I can remember where an
announcement might have been explicit in that regard (memory fades at this
distance) was similar to your mother's, for a colleague of mine in the 1980s
who was an active neopagan and virulently opposed to most organized religion
(for herself; she wasn't a [anti-] missionary), including the Roman
Catholicism she had been raised in. The funeral was conducted by a priest,
but he cited her explicit wish at the beginning and he honored it.

-- Mark
[This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]


On 6/12/07, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
>
> At 7:50 PM -0400 6/12/07, Mark Mandel wrote:
> >Saturday evening I attended a gathering in memory of a friend. It was
> >described as a "service" in the announcement as well as in the emails,
> >although it had no religious components: the main event consisted of a
> >number of people reminiscing about him.
> >
> >It could not have been more appropriate. But I do not remember previously
> >hearing the word "service" applied to any non-religious meeting.
> >
> >Relevant definition from m-w.com:
> >  a meeting for worship -- often used in plural <held evening services>
> >
> >... from OED Online:
> >  A celebration of public worship.
> >
> I'm surprised you haven't encountered it, Mark.  (Less so that it's
> not in the OED.)  It's been around for ages, especially in the
> collocations "memorial/remembrance service", although "ceremony" is
> also used.  We organized a "memorial service" of exactly the kind you
> describe for my mother in 1975; she was passionately opposed to all
> forms of organized religion and wouldn't have stood, even dead, for a
> religious service.
>
> LH
>
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