Requiring professional handling of dead people has certain benefits. It reduces the chance of infection (a lot of people in West Africa caught Ebola at funerals last year), and it probably also makes it more difficult for suspicious deaths to go unnoticed. Poisoned your uncle to get his money? The funeral director might call the police.

So it makes sense for professionals to get involved at least in the early hours after death, even if only to ensure that the body will not trigger an epidemic. But most of the rest of what we think of as a funeral is just a bundle of arbitrary practices -- some traditional, others invented and popularized by hospitals and funeral homes who profit from them. There is no reason to enshrine them in law. Families should be free to do as they please with their deceased, as long as they don't pose a threat to public health or interfere with a criminal investigation.