Death: Happy/Sad?

A few days ago, there's some kind of Buddhist wake slash death ritual near the place where I live and it reminded me of two things. First is the story my Japanese religion prof told me about one former NUS lecturer that is also a Buddhist monk and how every weekend now and then he would fly back to Japan and performed death rituals and got paid more than what NUS lecturers get in a month or something. Now that's an interesting post about religion and money waiting to be written but that's for another time.

The second thing that it reminded me of is an interview of Padma Lakshmi by TV's Craig Ferguson. They were talking how funerals and deaths in Sri Lanka in particular are celebratory events because they bring good luck to the people attending them. Now, this came from a totally un-academic source but again she came from India and had been to Sri Lanka and so did he so this is real experience. At first I was confused because I thought Sri Lanka is a predominantly Buddhist country and the way death is perceived is unlike the ones that I've seen or read before (for example, that wake underneath my block a few days ago). But then I thought perhaps it's not a Buddhist thing. Perhaps it's a Hinduism thing since there is Hindu influence coming from India. I did some reading from un-academic sources again (wikipedia, anyone?) and got a sense that their way of seeing death is perhaps a closer perception of a joyous celebration than Buddhism and maybe this was what Padma Lakshmi and Craig Ferguson were talking about. And then when I realised it, I was amazed by the possible different attitudes these two religions have regarding death although they have a similar view of the death process itself (reincarnation, etc.)

Maybe I'm oversimplifying things or maybe it got nothing to do with religion at all and it's simply a cultural things (although it can be argued that culture might got it from religion as well), but just imagine this scenario of a similar set of teachings taken by two group of people and how very differently the interpretations of those teachings are from one another. I'm afraid to ask the question but how major is the role of human interpretation on religion and it's teachings?