🇮🇳 India
Hindus offer food, water and sesame to the ancestors during Pitru Paksha, the fortnight before Navratri. The shraddha rite is performed by a son or close relative, often at Gaya or on a river bank.
Read: Pitri PakshaRemembering the ancestors: compared across 19 places
The same idea in 19 places, grouped by region. Each entry is a short portrait; follow the link for the full tradition.
South Asia 2Southeast Asia 2East Asia 3Central Asia and the Caucasus 1Middle East 1North Africa 1Sub-Saharan Africa 2Europe 2North America 2Latin America and the Caribbean 1Oceania 2
South Asia
🇳🇵 Nepal
Gai Jatra, in late summer, honours those who died in the past year as families lead decorated cows, or children dressed as cows, through the streets of Kathmandu Valley. Laughter and satire are part of the consolation.
Read: Gai JatraSoutheast Asia
🇻🇳 Vietnam
Every household keeps an ancestor altar, and the death anniversary, or gio, is marked with a family meal and offerings. Tet begins with a visit to graves and an invitation to the ancestors to join the celebration.
Vietnamese folk religion, being written🇰🇭 Cambodia
Pchum Ben lasts fifteen days in autumn, when families take rice and offerings to the pagoda for monks to pass on to the spirits of seven generations. The days are serious and communal.
Read: Pchum BenEast Asia
🇨🇳 China
At Qingming in early April families sweep the graves, set out food and burn paper offerings. Ancestor tablets in the home are also given incense through the year.
Read: Qingming Festival🇯🇵 Japan
Obon, in mid-August, welcomes the spirits home with lanterns lit at the door and bon odori dances. Families clean the grave, offer food at the household altar and send the spirits off with floating lanterns.
Read: Obon🇰🇷 Korea
Charye is a table of rice, soup, fruit and rice cakes laid for the ancestors at Chuseok and Seollal, and jesa is held on the anniversary of a death. Families also visit and tidy the graves in a custom called seongmyo.
Read: JesaCentral Asia and the Caucasus
🇰🇿 Kazakhstan
Kazakh families remember the dead with a memorial meal, the as, held on the 40th day and on the first anniversary, with prayers recited over the food. The spirits of the ancestors, aruaq, are believed to protect the family, and people ask for their blessing before a journey.
Tengrism, being writtenMiddle East
🇮🇷 Iran
On the last Thursday of the year families visit cemeteries with sweets and flowers, and Zoroastrians keep the Farvardigan days at the end of the old year, when the fravashis, the spirits of the departed, are believed to visit their homes. The visit to the cemetery is a quiet one, with rose water sprinkled on the graves and food given to the poor in the name of the dead.
Fravashi, being writtenNorth Africa
🇪🇬 Egypt
On feast days many Cairo families visit the family tomb, carrying bread, dates and sweets to give to the poor in the name of the dead. In the old cemeteries known as the City of the Dead, whole households live and picnic among the tombs.
City of the Dead, being writtenSub-Saharan Africa
🇬🇭 Ghana
Among the Akan, the dead are honoured with libations of schnapps or water poured to the earth, and with the Adae festivals for royal ancestors. Funerals and annual memorial gatherings are large family events.
Read: Adae Festival🇲🇬 Madagascar
In the highlands the famadihana, or turning of the bones, brings the family to re-wrap the dead in fresh silk shrouds, to dance with them and to share a meal at the tomb. It renews the bond between generations.
Read: FamadihanaEurope
🇮🇪 Ireland
Samhain at the end of October was the time when the boundary with the dead was thought thin, and families left a place at the hearth. All Souls and the blessing of graves continue the habit in a Christian form.
Read: Samhain🇵🇱 Poland
On 1 November, All Saints, whole families visit cemeteries and light candles on every grave, so that the cemeteries glow after dark. Many travel across the country to do it.
All Saints' Day, being writtenNorth America
🇲🇽 Mexico
Families build an ofrenda, an altar of marigolds, candles, photographs, sugar skulls and the dead person's favourite food, for the Day of the Dead on 1 and 2 November. Many spend the night in the cemetery, and the mood is warm and often joyful.
Read: Day of the Dead🇺🇸 United States
Memorial Day and the Native American and Latino traditions sit side by side. Many communities decorate graves with flowers and flags, hold family reunions at the cemetery and keep ancestor photographs on a mantel.
Memorial Day, being writtenLatin America and the Caribbean
🇬🇹 Guatemala
On 1 November, in Santiago Sacatepequez and Sumpango, giant kites are flown above the cemeteries as messages to the dead, while families picnic on the graves and eat fiambre, a cold salad made once a year. The kites are made of tissue paper and bamboo, some more than ten metres across, and families spend weeks building them.
Sumpango, Sacatepéquez, being writtenOceania
🇳🇿 New Zealand
Maori honour tupuna through whakapapa, the recited line of descent, at the start of every formal speech, and the dead lie in state in the family meeting house at a tangi. Carvings of ancestors line the walls of the whare.
Read: Whakapapa🇦🇺 Australia
Many Aboriginal peoples hold that ancestors made the land and are present in it, and ceremony and song keep the connection alive. Anzac Day is the national occasion for remembering those who died in war.
Anzac Day, being writtenAbout this page
Written by the EveryParampara desk with AI assistance. Customs differ from place to place and family to family. If this is your tradition and we have it wrong, tell us.