LIFE CYCLE

Born, baby, kid, teenagers, adult, then become older, finally go to heaven. This is life. It will not stick in one condition. It will flow as the time has changed.

people are holding tahlilan for 7days of death

As a Javanese, there will always be a rite in every moment, special moment. Before a baby born seeing the world, people will also do rites. It is called neloni and mitoni. Neloni is held when the unborn baby is 3 months, while mitoni when it is 7 months. This is held to ask for blessing and grace from God. They pray together for the safety of mom and baby. To do the rites, they need to prepare some food, just like the other rites. They need panggang, rice (nasi giling, nasi uduk), bananas and pecel. The rites is simple since they pray together, eat together, and bring the food home. The most important of the rite is the pray. When the baby is born, the baby is 7days, 25 days, rite is also held for the same aims. It is to show thankfulness to God for giving safety to the baby and mom.

When people died, rites will also be held. The rites is quite similar with the baby born rites. People will pray together for 7 days continuously. Then 40 days, 100 days, 1000 days, they will still hold the same rites. This article will only focus on how this rite works.

People will come to the house of people who die at night, usually at 07.30 (after isya’). They will gather in the living room, sitting down together while they bring Al-Quran and tahlil book. They will sit making a circle, therefore there will be no one in the middle of room. Women usually sit down in the back side. In the middle of the room there will be offering. Those are gedhang tangkep, and flowers. Gedhang tangkep is bananas. It can be any kind of bananas. It is places in tray or any container, while it is combined with rice inside. The flowers are inside a container filled with water.

Since the recent tradition is acculturated with Islam, they pray together in Islamic ways. They read Al-quran (surah yasin), and tahlil. They will read it together and loudly, leaded by one of them. After, they finish tahlilan, there will be some snack and drink. People will eat it together. And then there will be also ingkung (chicken) and nasi giling (rice shaped circle). Those two food will be divided to people who come there, and usually they will wrap it using jati leaves. Bananas and rice which are on container will also be divided to people. Special for 7days, 40days, 100days, and 1000days, the food will not only be snack, but it will be rice, vegetable, and meat. After they finish eating, and praying, people will go home while bringing the foods. And this is the end of the rites. One more, the flowers inside container will be spread on the grave the next morning. But some people will also spread it in the nearest intersection.

That is how the tradition acculturated with Islamic ways. It is still kept in this village, not only this village, yet most of Javanese people. Some of them maybe have left this kind of tradition, but still there will always people who keep this tradition because they believe in it, and they want to keep the culture since culture is part of life.