Rest In Peace - How come some funerals are open casket while others are closed?

How come some funerals are open casket while others are closed?

Public Comments

depends on the family and their beliefs.
Sometimes the body can't be "fixed up" enough to be viewable in a service. For instance, if somebody died in their home and it took a few weeks for someone else to find the body, the body will have severely decomposed. It will smell and there's just so much you can do with makeup before the result will look far worse than your image of him if you had just left the casket closed. And what about those bodies where parts are missing? Do you really want an open casket if there is no head? It happens and there's no sense in pretending it doesn't. So why do we have open caskets? Some people get a better "sense of closure" - a more firm realization that the person is actually dead if they can see them in the death setting (service, flowers, casket etc.) As is said below - funerals are for the living. The people who prepare the corpse for the casket, service and burial, decide, with the relatives, what the best course of action will be, in consideration of the people who will be present at the viewing and service. And yes, sometimes they are wrong. Its never going to be easy though. "Wrong", in this case, only means that people were put through a little more pain then they had to be.
yeah.. it depends on the family.....when my grandmother died we had an open casket ceremony
some people are sicker than others. there should not even BE a casket there. BTW, funerals are for the living.
It depends on LOTS of factors... 1. The religion or belief of the family may require things to happen in a certain way. 2. It depends on the condition of the body... If you die and are promptly taken to the morgue, an open casket is OK but if your not found for a while or are in an accident... Yeah... No one should have the last image in their mind of a loved one being a half desiccated chunk of hamburger. Watch this to get an idea of options through the Death Industry: Death, Inc. Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-TJ_Lz6BH4 Death, Inc. Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWPULdbu4Rs Death, Inc. Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBWmKkhE9kY
not only beliefs depends on how they died if they got shot in the head or top half of body got ran over by semi or something i don't think you would want a open casket
not everyone dies peacefully in their sleep. sometimes it's a car accident, a fire, a shooting or some other instance where the body is too messed up to be viewed in an open casket. sometimes the family would rather have a closed casket.
It's the family's option, when the funeral director is planning the funeral he ask if you want open or closed. Depends on how bad the body is ie car crash etc. Plus religion plays a lot to do with it. In Australia we have mainly private viewings before the service so you can choose who goes ie sons & daughters as some jerks go just to sticky beak
not to sound like the other answers here but it depends on what the family or the deceased wanted and like helana said somtimes the body cant be fixed up enough depending on the way they died. i remember my best friend passed when we were in the 3rd grade- he was crushed to death by a tractor and i would have loved to see his face one last time but for obviouse reasons it was a closed casket
It depends on what the family wants, how the person died and what they look like when they died, or religious beliefs.