Types

• Rituals surrounding food at funerals and mourning symbolism are largely the domain of women. Women also take part in the preparation of the body for burial and prayers or laments performed at burials.
  
  

Specifics

• In the Greek culture, wearing black to symbolize mourning may take place for up to three years. Greek women may prepare and distribute ritual or traditional foods such as kollyva, a sweet boiled wheat dish, and paximadia, a cinnamon cookie. They may provide a funerary meal and sing ritual laments called mirologia.
  
  

Considerations

• Over the years, many Greeks moved away from their homeland and started communities in other countries, so the role of women in a rural Greek village today may be quite different from the practices of women in a modern city or in other parts of the world. The customs may take on abbreviated forms or cease to be practiced.
  
  

Changes

• Women may still wear black for a period of mourning following the death but seldom for years. Washing and dressing of the body is now the job of morticians. Food preparation may be as simple as the presentation of kollyva or paximadia, and they rarely sing lamentations.