Many Brits still feel awkward discussing death – but the team behind a fresh national day want to encourage open conversations about loss
Death is life’s only certainty, the great leveller – so why do we find it so hard to talk about it?
That’s the question raised by a recent poll that marked Celebration Day, a British spin on Mexico’s Día de los Muerto (Day of the Dead) which since 2022 has been held each May.
The survey found that over a quarter of Brits feel awkward discussing death and almost a third feel guilty for expressing grief, worrying about burdening others. For this year’s event, a host of celebrities including actor and comedian Stephen Mangan, actor and director Maisie Richardson-Sellers and actor Nathaniel Parker recorded poems at Abbey Road studios in tribute to loved ones and inspiring figures in their lives.
“I love how we’re a patchwork of every single person we’ve met, and every single person we’ve loved,” said actor Helena Bonham Carter, who also took part. “Even if people die, they remain part of our fabric, our internal world. In this crazy world, we need to have permission to stop – a day in which we can invoke them, and remember them, and let them live again through us.”
Not everyone is thrilled about another entry on the crowded awareness day calendar, especially one that comes with the inevitable hashtags, merch and corporate tie-ins.
Big names like Tesco and WHSmith have backed the cause. Writer Emma Beddington wrote in the Guardian that the idea of buying a Celebration Day badge gave her the cringe, and posited that the whole initiative felt too generic for remembering our loved and lost.
Even if people die, they remain part of our fabric, our internal world
“If the spirit moves you to celebrate … wonderful,” she wrote. “But if it doesn’t, no one needs a hashtag to celebrate the dead, how and whenever they like.”
But, say those behind the event, its heart is less about marketing and more about normalising grief while creating space for conversations around death and remembrance. “We often speak about forgetting and moving on and I really want to bang the drum that Celebration Day is about remembering and connecting and having a special day to honour the memories,” said psychotherapist and Therapy Works podcast host Julia Samuel.
Main image: Rory Langdon-Down
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