Originally posted by crabx:
eg. u r a buddhist/taoist, so are your parents.
then some or a few of your cousins or maybe uncle aunties are christians converts.
then ask u know, in the month of april, chinese custom dictates that the descendants have to go to ancestor's tomb/urn to 'sweep tomb' and offer food plus burn paper offerings.
then usually its amah or ah gong organize the event, then on that day itself you and your extended family (uncle, auntie, cousins...) gather together to go tomb sweeping for your great grandparents tomb.
then hor, some of your cousins or uncle/auntie are christians converts, so they choose not to turn up at all. or maybe they will turn up but won;t do any pai pai, just look at everyone pai pai burn josspaper etc.
Then your amah or ah gong got complain or kao peh kao boo, say now young generation all convert to christian then after that don't participate in the praying to ancestors or help to burn josspapers or lay the color paper on the tomb mound?? Then they say like if everyone in the family convert liao, then in future nobody will go and tend to the ancestor's tomb during cheng beng n hungry ghost festival. Then its like we will let down our ancestor and then will result in bad karma or thunder god will strike or go to hell after death etc... Then ancestors won't bless us anymore and further generations will have bad luck blah blah. Then amah/ah gong also say like our last time ancestors come to sg from china, have to work very hard for a living here and faced many hardships, and therefore the more reasons we have to remember them.
So how do u feel about your cousins or uncle/auntie who choose not to attend at all? They pantang until don;t want to turn up. They think that just because they convert to christian already, they can't come to the tomb or columbarium. Its not like they have to hold joss stick or burn offering or what. Just attend the event only, just look only, maybe at the most give a bow to the ancestor tomb. Then some of these people are also pantang such that they won't eat the food offered to the dead.
Maybe just to give a different perspective, maybe they don't want to go is because they go down and stand at the side, they get weird stares/looks and all. Could it be also that they don't want to have to put up with Ah Ma or Ah Gong telling them to take part in the ceremony?
I'm not part of your family/relatives so I won't know what really goes on. Neither am I saying that is definitely your relative's reason for not going, but just a possibility.
Also regarding food offered to the dead, different people have different perspective, so I can't quite comment on that. But there are Christians that are ok with it, there are those who are not.
And on a side note, not taking part in the rituals doesn't mean not remembering them, although perhaps different people have different expectations and musts when it comes to remembering the dead.
