Logical or Morbid? Test your ethnocentrism....

An interesting historical tradition I was unaware of:

Taken from: Marco Polo: From Venice to Xanadu by Laurence Bergreen

One Mongol custom in particular astounded Marco [Polo]: the marriage of dead children…”When there are two men, the one who has a dead male child inquires for another man who may have had a female child suited to him, and she also may be dead before she is married; these two parents make a marriage of the two dead together.  They give the dead girl to the dead boy for wife, and they have documents about it in corroboration of the dowry and marriage.”

When such a ceremony was complete, a necromancer –a shaman or magician who communicated with the dead- burned the documents, with the smoke announcing the spirits of the dead the marriage of these two deceased children.  A marriage feast ensued. Later, the families fashioned images of the dead newlyweds, placed them on a horse-drawn cart adorned with flowers, and paraded them throughout the land, until, when they were done feasting, they consigned the images to the flames, “with great prayer and supplication to the gods that they make that marriage known in the other world with happiness.”

The two families bound by the marriage of their dead children exchanged gifts, even a dowry, as if bride and groom walked among them, erasing the boundaries between life and death. Afterward, “the parents and kinsmen of the dead court themselves as kindred and keep up their relationship…as if their dead children were alive.”