FAQ

If you have a question, please use the form at the bottom of this page.

FAQ

• Why does World Death Day not use any kind of logo or symbol?

  Within the limits of reason and possibility, World Death Day aims to be universally inclusive. While it is freely and without limitation available for any person in the world to engage in, it is recognised that because images are so bound up in individual cultures, choosing one logo over another, with all its inevitable embodied cultural associations, would likely only resonate with a specific or limited cultural group or setting, who would recognise it and likely claim it as their own at the expense of others. World Death Day has not been established in order to prescribe content or meaning, or to shoe-horn one ideology into another, or overlay an individual’s culture with what it perceives to be universal imagery, which is after all, what every logo strives to be. However, as it is in the public domain, participants are free to produce their own images on their own terms to represent the day for themselves within their own cultures.

  Readers may be interested to note that the images included on worlddeathday.com have been selected specifically for their universal qualities, their ability to be understood by anyone.

• What is the difference between World Death Day and worlddeathday.com?

  World Death Day is the event, worlddeathday.com is just a website where the idea was launched. It can also be used as a backstop, a place to refer back to the original principles and motivation for starting World Death Day, if this is helpful. As of 2021, worlddeathday.com is hosted as a microsite on Graeme Walker’s website. This will change once funds come in to keep it running. Something that you can help out with, if you like.

• My country does not use the international standard calendar, can I still acknowledge mortality on World Death Day?

  Yes. While the date set for World Death Day is the last day of the international standard calendar, there are several countries that do not use this calendar (Afghanistan, Iran, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Nepal, plus others that use an adjusted/augmented standard calendar). As has already been explained, the date was set on the 31st of December because for most people it already conveniently resonates as the symbolic end of the international standard calendar year.

  However, this is where its usefulness as a date ends. World Death Day is not a symbolic gesture. It is not aligned with the concept of “new year” or “new year’s eve”. It is not bound to a particular culture, or nation, or people, or language. In the same way that the content on this website has been written in English in the hope that it will reach many people who can then translate it into their own languages, World Death Day is both expansive and inclusive in its objectives.

  In this way, it can be understood that the date for World Death Day is arbitrary. It’s placement on the 31st of December is little more than convenience. So if your culture or nation does not subscribe to the international standard calendar, you too can remember that this is just a day you happen to be alive in and that one day you and all things that live, will die.

• How is World Death Day different from the Mexican Día de los Muertos and similar events?

  World Death Day has no connections to any specific cultural, national, religious or political movement or ideology. The primary aim of the establishment of World Death Day was to give space and time for the acknowledgment of death and mortality itself, in the hope that it can contribute to the healing of the (specific) issues that arise from death denial in humans.

  This is a public event, in the public domain. No one owns World Death Day, or has any control over how it might be observed or interpreted, or how it might evolve. With this understanding, it is entirely possible that Mexicans and others who have their own cultural events in connection with death, can also observe World Death Day if they so choose.

• How do I greet someone during World Death Day?

  For those who use the English language, it is common to add “happy” as a prefix to the day of note, and this formulates the greeting. However, although World Death Day is in the public domain and people can therefore greet people whichever way they like, it should be noted that this is not a day of celebration, but of acknowledgement. With this in mind, it is suggested that you greet people in the way you normally would in whatever language you usually speak, but also take the opportunity to talk about mortality.

• Is World Death Day the same day as New Year’s Eve?

  Although it falls on the same day, World Death Day is not the same as New Year’s Eve, but runs concurrently, using the symbol of New Year as a convenient metaphor for those among us who use the international standard calendar. In this, we understand that the year comes to an end, but there’s always the day after and with it, the renewed possibility of life.

• Is World Life Day the day after, on New Year’s Day?

  If you want it to be.

• Isn’t the idea of World Death Day a bit morbid and sinister?

  The function of World Death Day is to give some shape and truth to the ending of life, but the point of doing so is to give shape to life itself. World Death Day does not call for an unhealthy, macabre, dark, negative, sinister or otherwise morbid treatment of death. Nor does it promote or encourage the use of sinister horrific or fearful imagery, media, ideas etc.

  On the contrary, it has been established to provide space for a positive and healthy acknowledgment of mortality, in the hope that this can counter some of the nihilism and fears that are so destructive in our world.

  By acknowledging one’s own death and the ultimate death of all things, life gains shape, urgency, force. Life must be worth living. This has nothing to do with traditional depictions of death from any culture, which typically are sinister in nature, both now and historically.

  Moreover, with the above in mind, World Death Day was established to counter the negative and fearful associations that sinister and macabre imagery brings.

• Is World Death Day in the public domain?

  It is. This means that no one owns it and people can make money out of it any way they like, which they can keep (not that this was the spirit in which it was established).

  World Death Day is a day of acknowledgment that anyone anywhere can choose to participate in and interpret any way want. There is a hope that by placing World Death Day into the public domain, it will reach more people and bring them together in if not universal understanding, at least universal acknowledgment.

• Who is Graeme Walker?

  Graeme Walker is an artist based in the UK whose work examines our human relationship with nature and mortality. He founded World Death Day in 2021 and launched it into the Public Domain.

  He also owns and manages worlddeathday.com and edits The Ferryman journal.