8Asians | An Asian American collaborative blog

What do all-you-can-eat buffets, butterflies, and taking the long way home have to do with death?  They are all part of the Filipino American funeral practices, at least from what I have seen practiced here in my Silicon Valley ethnoburb.  I am documenting these practices to record what Filipino Americans often do when one of their family members die.  This post is intended to be a guide for people to know what expect at or what they are expected to do for a Filipino American funeral.

One of the first things that typically happens when a Filipino American dies is that their family starts a Novena that evening. Most Filipinos are Roman Catholic, and the prayer sessions starts with the Rosary Prayer.  There is usually a Litany too, in which the petitions are made to Saints and other Holy entities to intercede on behalf of the deceased. It feels like this process is nagging the Saints to help out. This nagging continues for eight more days for good measure.

Food and Drink

The family of the deceased that is hosting the Novena sessions provides food and drink for the attendees. That process can be tiring and a drain on resources.  One thing that has changed over the years is that after the COVID-19 pandemic, the Novena sometimes is shared on Zoom.  In this way, relatives and friends all over the world can take part.

Before the actual burial, the bereaved family often conducts a viewing. This way, friends and family can see the deceased before they are buried. Again, the family of the deceased is expected to provide food for friends and family. In Silicon Valley, funeral homes understand this and usually provide a room or other places in the funeral home for storing the food and where the food can be eaten.

Burial Day

On the burial day or final disposition of the ashes if the deceased is cremated, there is usually a funeral mass. The deceased is often buried with rosary beads.  The rosary must be cut before closing the casket as this is believed to prevent any more deaths in the family. After burial, there is a final obligation for the family to feed friends and relatives.  This is often done at all you can eat Asian buffets! The World Gourmet Buffet is a popular place to host after-funeral meals. Most of the times that I go to an all you can eat Asian buffet is for an after-funeral meal.  I was once happy that I went to the World Gourmet Buffet for a birthday party, but then again, after a few years, the birthday celebrant died and it was back to the buffet restaurant for the after-funeral meal.

Mourners often provide an “abuloy,” which is a donation to the family to offset the costs of the funeral and the costs of providing all of the food that I just mentioned.  When going home after the burial, one should take a longer and not the usual route home, so the deceased spirit will not follow them home. This does not always work, though. Butterflies that are seen afterward are associated with the spirits coming to visit.

40 Days and After

Tradition has it that the spirit of the deceased wanders on earth for 40 days.  At the end of 40 days, another prayer session is held. After that, every year on All Saints day a celebration call “undas” is held. It is similar to the Chinese Tomb-Sweeping Day or the Mexican Day of the Dead. Filipinos go back to the graves or their loved ones to clean up the graves and spend the day there, often as a picnic.  Cemeteries in the Bay Area who have many Filipino Americans interred there can get jammed on those days. Sometimes special events are planned by the cemeteries on those days. We often see people we know when we go on those days to cemeteries where our families are buried, as many people in our ethnoburb have family buried there.

You might want to compare how these funeral rituals and customers compare to Chinese American ones. Tim gives a pretty good description. I hope that people find this useful for holding a Filipino American funeral.  If there is anything I missed or got wrong, please let me know in the comments.