Thanksgiving service

I've noticed that Filipinos celebrate things that are, um, "different." On Saturday, we went to a birthday party for someone we didn't really know, but that was okay because we went with people who did know the celebrant. The thing that was different was that the celebrant had been dead for a year. Today, we went to a thanksgiving service held in the home of a person with whom our only connection is that we recently ran into him with our school vehicle. In fact, all of the victims of the accident were present.