Funeral Games
This is so Irish Catholic. Except there’s no way it would take my family a month to drink its way through the deceased’s leftover wealth. We’d drink through the funeral money in a weekend and some uncle or other would go out back, several sheets to the wind, and dig a hole in the backyard. He’d have the deceased halfway to the hole, drug by the heels, before the family matriarch put a stop to the whole matter. I don’t think anybody would try to set the corpse on fire though; at least that hasn’t happened in living memory… though we have had funeral games that have consisted of drawing Sharpie mustaches on the people who pass out first.
And þǣr is mid Ēstum ðēaw, þonne þǣr bið man dēad, þæt hē līð inne unforbærned mid his māgum and frēondum mōnað, ġehwīlum twēġen; and þā kyningas and þā ōðre hēahðungene men swā miċle lencg swā hī māran spēda habbað, hwīlum healfġēar þæt hī bēoð unforbærned; and licgað bufan eorðan on hyra hūsum. And ealle þā hwīle þe þæt līċ bið inne, þǣr scealbēon ġedrync and plega, oð ðone dæġ þe hī hine forbærnað.
– Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, or however people are calling it these days. Shamelessly ganked from Peter Baker
