Horan said that while the biggest change in the American funeral business is the more frequent choice of cremation, it is fueled by the same sentiment that leads people to put personal items in caskets. When JFK was president, the cremation rate was 5 percent. When JFK Jr. died in 1999, the cremation rate was 25 percent, Horan said. The main reason was the advent of a faster-paced, more mobile society in the 1950s, Horan said. People were tied more loosely to family and community.
Cremation produces ashes, which survivors either can keep or spread in a meaningful place.
Putting a keepsake in the casket provides a similarly personal gesture in an increasingly impersonal world. In both cases, it feels like a more personal farewell. The baby boomer generation has influenced burial rites and customs, said Weigel, who is a boomer. Surrounded by a disposable culture in life, boomers may seek to create something more lasting in death. The generation born mostly in the postwar 1950s wants to celebrate the life that they lived and create a meaningful funeral, Weigel said.