I agree wholeheartedly. The survivors probably follow this arrangement because they need to see the body in order to receive closure. But how could you possibly turn the casket so that others can't see it if the people who want to view it are in the audience? Most of the funerals I have been to involve an open casket wake with a closed casket service.

idk i guess thats the way it is..some of the caskets have glass so you cant touch the deceased...

Well in my family we dont insist on a open casket, i think that if the family member was horribly disfigured than there would be no other option. at the funerals i have attended you could not see the body really until it was time to stand and view the body, you always have the option of not going to view the body as it is being viewed. In my situation, my grandmother recently passed on and our family made sure we had an open casket, we all wanted to see my beautiful grandmother, we made sure we wore the same color she wore and there were several of us. My granny was our life and we made sure she was fabulous because thats what she liked. The only thing is by the time we all viewed her at the services she looked a mess, we had cried all over her dress, made her eyeglasses foggy and stained with tears, her make up was kissed off, she was crooked in the casket because everyone was leaning all over her and the funeral took extra long because we All kept going back to say one last good-bye, lining up like we were at an amusement park, but i dont feel ashamed at all because we did the same thing when she was alive so it had nothing to with guilt, we just didnt want her to go

Well, you have a very good point. But you have answered your question yourself within the question. I have no different answer but an expression in agreement to yours.

I think its how people are brought up tradition and all that. I live in scotland what we do here is they have an open casket in the funeral directors where family can visit , then on the funeral day the family go to the funeral director's the coffin gets nailed shut and is driven out to the church. so that way only the people that want to see the body sees it and the others are not left traumatised

Looking at a lifeless body seems very pointless to me. I love a closed casket or a memorial where there is no body in a box around. When they say the person has died, I trust and believe them.