MikeLigalig.com

KAWIT, Cavite -- A Cavite social science associate professor and former museum co-curator disclosed during a lecture over the weekend that the province’s funeral customs and traditions had adopted then the color-coding scheme even during burial rites.

Jeffrey Alfaro Lubang in his history lecture before senior high to college students of St. Dominic College of Asia at Museo ni Emilio Aguinaldo (MEA) revealed that it was customary in those times to use brown coffins for elders while the white was meant for a single male or female dead persons.

Lubang was a guest presenter as MEA launched its annual lecture series “KABITEsaysayan” to impart Cavite’s rich history, culture and the arts to the next generation and provide them a learning arena from local historians.

“Burial in Cavite has and is always been accompanied by a marching band, which used to be a symbol of wealth and social status in the past,” Lubang said as the discussion turned lively and interesting despite the lecturer’s subject on death.

He also said that another status symbol is reflected on who prays for the death where the “dapit-pari” was for the rich as he recited prayers in four different areas during the funeral march.

On the other hand, the “dapit senyales” was only officiated in by a “sacristan” or acolyte to lead the prayer.

Lubang’s hour-long interactive discussions on Cavite’s culture and sociology of death were excerpts from his book “Pantyon” which delves into the oftentimes creepy yet inevitable fact of death.

He explained that “some influences on how we perceived death are brought about by how our elder folks used death as a threat during our younger years and how it was portrayed in the media.”

The university professor also presented olden beliefs and still being practiced in some areas on the position of the coffin when it is pointed towards the door to mean the family is okay to let go of their departed relatives.

Other traditions involved avoiding mirror in the funeral, “pagpag” or avoiding going straight home from the funeral or burial site to mislead the spirit; shunning from funerals or burials to avoid bad luck, and not attending a funeral or burial to avoid aggravating certain illnesses.

He also discussed the “pa-syam,” a novena for nine days and the 40 days after death and the “babang-luksa” to culminate a year of mourning; olden practice of “kalembang ng dambana” or church bells’ fast ringing for a dead child and slow and hollow tolling of the bell for male and slow and tingling sound for the female.

For the sociological outlook, Lubang also pointed out death has its purpose because it unites the family in mourning; people come to recognize the good deeds of the dead, and it seals the time for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Miguel Sebastian Alvarez, a Grade 10 student and the school’s Supreme Student Council head, said he and the young audiences expressed appreciation to MEA’s program to impart to them Cavite’s customs, traditions, history and the arts during the free lecture.    

Alvarez said he and his peers would be using their social media platform to share the experience and invite all other students, including their kin to come and visit Kawit's Emilio Aguinaldo Museum.

“We will be most willing to accompany them again and again because in every visit, there’s something waiting to be discovered,” Alvarez added. (PNA) NOVEMBER 2017

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