How....bizarre.
Not really, we bury our family in their favorite clothing, pictures of their family, in some cases if they have a hobby, a small piece of it. Children are buried with their favorite toys.
Goes back I would guess to the practices of the cave men that buried their people with the tools they had used in life just in case they needed them in another life.
I went to a funeral in Down East Maine 5 years ago. The friend of ours was a good 400 pounds and there were no caskets in the area to hold him without breaking his bones to fit him in.
Wife did not want to wait for a big casket to arrive and the cost was double the normal.
Wife decided to have her husband seated on a love seat, all dressed up and looking snappy. The seat was elevated about a foot high on a platform so the kneeling bench was below his feet.
We all came in and I found myself connecting to the deceased more then if he had been laid out.
The old joke goes that as Roy Rogers had his horse embalmed what did he do with Dale Evens.?