[MoochPooch]

I was thinking of the “Dance of Death” motif in the Middle Ages—the dancing skeletons—particularly following the bubonic plague in 1348. People went to the cemeteries to party — one big psychological defense against the raging diseases.

Maybe that’s what the funeral home here had in mind.

[AnAmericanMother]

And of course you have the corresponding "Dia de las Muertos" in Mexican culture, with picnics in cemeteries at the graves of deceased relatives, and candies in the shape of skulls, and the charming and politically pointed "calaveras" of Jose' Guadalupe Posada.

Diego Rivera's homage to Posada:

(detail from his Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park)

Someone with more learning in the area than I will have to tell us if this "Totentanz" motif is present in black funeral traditions. I suppose there's an echo of it in the New Orleans funeral band tradition, with the funeral music played on the way to the cemetery, and the jazz played on the way home.

I've never noticed this sort of jolly embrace of the macabre in 50+ years in the South, and a reasonable number of black funerals, including my husband attending one at this very funeral home. But maybe I just wasn't paying attention.

This may be a cross-cultural miscommunication -- or it may just be an advertising miscalculation in the front office.