During last week’s celebration festivities for the Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl win, we noticed a trend emerging on social media. Fans were scattering ashes at the super bowl events like the big game and the celebration parade.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on a fan named Dustin Slaughter who brought his father’s ashes to the Eagles Super Bowl parade. The Philadelphia native commented:
“It feels good to have him with me for a day like today.”
Anther fan at the parade who traveled from Florida posted a video to Twitter showing him scattering his grandfather’s remains on-route. There were at least five other documented instances of memorializing passed lived ones at the Eagles’s events.
This surprisingly common practice of memorializing at the Super Bowl is evidence of our progressing comfort with cremated remains, the desire for ritual, and the increasingly personalized methods of memorialization that we seek out.
The remembrance ritual trends witnessed at the Super Bowl events expose an accessible opportunity for funeral homes. Funeral Homes are uniquely qualified to facilitate activities like celebrating the big win with cremated loved ones, hosting a ritual scattering to commemorate die-hard sports fans who didn’t live to see the big victory, or organizing other highly personalized rituals that happen to occur in numbers during shared-experience events.
Hosting these types of community support activities can be invaluable marketing strategies forming camaraderie with locals, building trust, and becoming apart of a memorable story for each person involved. Bringing organization to the randomized rituals that we witnessed last week is a heartfelt gesture and perfect content for social media marketing and press coverage. The Eagles ashes scattering was covered by The New York Post, Pennlive.com, Thescore.com, Dailymail.co.uk, Fox43.com, and a dozens more media outlets.
Have you organized a memorial around a regional event? Tell us about it in the comments!
doesn’t get realer than scattering your grandfather’s ashes at the Eagles Super Bowl parade.
said they flew up from Tampa. pic.twitter.com/HPygzJahmD
— maurice (@tallmaurice) February 8, 2018
corroborating @jmseabrook‘s last paragraph—these photos from the Eagles Reddit.
RT @NewYorker: The Eagles parade was beautiful, melancholy, profane, and utterly Philly: https://t.co/CTGFc2ds3R pic.twitter.com/1LstPyjNOZ
— maurice (@tallmaurice) February 9, 2018
My uncle, who was also a father figure in my life, passed away a year and a half ago. Yesterday was his birthday and he was the biggest @Eagles fan. His brother is taking a small vial of his ashes to the #EaglesParade to be spread out as they follow along. I love and miss you.
— VinnyChev (@VinnyChev) February 8, 2018
The bag of Ashes of a TRUE @Eagles thrown on parade route is a total eagle fan move #eagles #EaglesParade not kidding
— Dawn Sweeney (@dsweeney4128) February 8, 2018
The bag of Ashes of a TRUE @Eagles thrown on parade route is a total eagle fan move #eagles #EaglesParade not kidding
— Dawn Sweeney (@dsweeney4128) February 8, 2018
