CREMATION: THEN AND NOW

By Ryan Helfenbein

Ashes to ashes, trends to trends – because if there’s one thing humanity excels at, it’s confidently declaring something “new,” only to rediscover we were already doing it 2,000 years ago.

Take cremation. Today it often feels modern and streamlined, the kind of choice that comes with clean lines, simple ceremonies, and maybe a tasteful playlist instead of a procession of black cars. But long before it became associated with contemporary life, cremation had already enjoyed a very successful first run. In fact, for much of the ancient world – especially during the height of Roman civilization – cremation wasn’t an alternative option. It was the option.

In ancient Rome, cremation was common enough to be unremarkable. When someone died, their body cremated on a funeral pyre, the remains carefully collected, and the ashes placed in an urn. Those urns were often stored in columbaria, communal structures lined with niches, essentially the Roman version of high-density housing – only quieter. This wasn’t fringe behavior or some rebellious trend. It was mainstream, culturally accepted, and deeply embedded in daily life. 

Then came Christianity, and with it, a shift in how the body was understood after death. Burial became more closely tied to religious belief and symbolism, and cremation gradually fell out of favor across much of Europe. Over centuries, burial became the default, the “proper” way to handle a deceased, while cremation drifted into the background, occasionally viewed with suspicion or outright disapproval. For a long time, it stayed there. Put it this way … if cremation had a résumé, there’s a noticeable employment gap between the fall of Rome and the modern era.

Fast-forward to today, and suddenly cremation is back – no toga required. In the United States, 2023 marked a milestone year, with cremation accounting for just over 60 percent of dispositions. That’s not a trend on the rise anymore; that’s the majority. Cross the Atlantic and the numbers climb even higher. In the United Kingdom, more than 80 percent result in cremation. If ancient Romans were keeping score, they’d be feeling pretty vindicated right now.

What’s striking isn’t just that cremation is popular again – it’s how familiar this moment would feel to people living two millennia ago. Different technology, different language, different beliefs, but the same basic idea: cremation as a respectful, accepted, even ordinary way to mark the end of a life. The methods are cleaner, the facilities more regulated, and the urn selection far more diverse, but the core practice hasn’t changed all that much. Cremate, place the ashes in the urn, and place the urn in a columbarium. While they may not be as ornate as our ancestors, the general principle of permanent memorialization remains. 

There’s something oddly comforting about that. We tend to think of modern funeral choices as deeply personal reflections of contemporary values, and in many ways they are. But they’re also reminders that we circle back to old ideas when they still make sense. Burial dominated for centuries, cremation faded, and now the pendulum has swung again. Not because we’re copying the Romans, but because – like them – we’re navigating what it means to be remembered.

So while cremation may feel like a product of modern life, it’s really more of a comeback tour. History didn’t move on from cremation so much as it paused it. And now, thousands of years after Roman funeral pyres lit the night sky, we find ourselves right back where they once stood – proving that even in death, humanity has a habit of saying, “Actually… this worked pretty well last time.”

Ryan, owner, supervising mortician and preplanning counselor at Lasting Tributes on Bestgate Road in Annapolis, offers area residents solutions to high-cost funerals. He can be contacted at (410) 897-4852 or [email protected].