Human Flower Project

Secular Customs

Sunday, December 19, 2004

Poinsettia: a Little Legend, a Lot of Marketing

We call Euphorbia pulcherrima—a.k.a. nochebuena, poinsettia—the “traditional” Christmas flower of the Americas. But traditions, like all dimensions of culture, aren’t decreed by Nature; they’re human-made.

So who turned a highland weed into a consumerist sacrament?

Fifteen years ago during a dusty busride in the Guatemalan highlands, we passed a huge hill covered with red bushes: poinsettia, wild, blooming like mad in early August. How weird to see a whole mountainside of them in the summer sunlight.

Joel Poinsett, the first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, must have seen something like this nearly a century ago. An amateur botanist, he brought the plant back to his native South Carolina, sharing it with “John Bartram of Philadelphia, who in turn gave the plant over to another friend, Robert Buist, a Pennsylvania nurseryman.”

For months, from Delaware, to Texas, to Xochimilco (the famed flower district of Mexico City), growers have been toiling to meet the huge holiday demand for poinsettias. From the White House to the beautician’s counter, they’re everywhere. It’s traditional.

The legend of the nochebuena , as the plant is called in Mexico, is a Christmas story that smacks of the Little Match Girl and Little Drummer Boy. I don’t know where the tale came from or how far back the association of this starry red flower with Christmas reaches. But I can guess.

Paul Ecke, Sr.
harvesting poinsettias
Photo: Ecke Ranch
It was a miracle of marketing, performed by Paul Ecke, Sr.. In the 1920s, Ecke, a California nurseryman, recognized that the poinsettia “would make an ideal official holiday flower. But the question remained: how to promote and market a plant that most people had never heard of or even seen, let alone associate it with the holiday season?”

The Ecke Ranch website offers a wonderful history, an unabashed example of what Eric Hobsbawm calls “the invention of tradition.” Ecke’s success involved intensive cultivation, roadside sales in Hollywood and Beverly Hills, innovative use of greenhouses, and—perhaps most important of all—strategic product placement.

Paul Ecke, Sr. (1895-1991)
Photo: Ecke Ranch
Ecke “made certain that poinsettias became a necessary part of the holiday experience. No holiday scene could be considered complete without at least one poinsettia in it. On a larger scale, the Ranch worked with television, such as The Tonight Show and the Bob Hope Christmas Specials, to make certain that poinsettias were always a part of the holiday sets.”

And speaking of product placement: “the United States produces more poinsettias than any other country, patenting new varieties and reaping some $260 million a year in sales, and Mexico, meanwhile, can’t sell the plants in the United States because of restrictions on importing Mexican soil.”

Does it drain some of the magic out of Christmas poisettias to learn that they were foisted on us all by an industrious Californian, with Bob Hope as his promotional Blitzen? Maybe. But Santa Claus hadn’t managed to get those blooming plants from the Mexican mountains to Home Depot by December 24. Mr. Ecke looks like an elf to me.

Thursday, December 16, 2004

Rejecting Flowers—The Ultimate Rebuff

Mourners of Filipino movie star and presidential candidate Fernando Poe, Jr. seem to have broken an international taboo when they trampled a condolence wreath.

Fernando Poe, Jr. had been called the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the Philippines, a mega-movie star who crossed over into politics. Actually, The Terminator was running a couple of ambitions behind Poe, who died last week at age 65.

A Manila woman mourns Fernando Poe, Jr.
Photo: Erik de Castro for Reuters

Last spring, Poe ran for president of the Philippines, losing a bitter race to Gloria Arroyo in May. Claiming that Arroyo had stolen the election, Poe and his supporters never conceded the election.

“Da King,” as he was known, had “starred in more than 200 films since the 1950s, usually as the strong, silent hero who beat up the bad guys.” His campaign pledge makes clear his constituency: Poe had promised “breakfast, lunch and dinner” for all Filipinos.

Tuesday night during a wake outside Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City, mounds of flowers arrived as throngs of Poe’s fans and political supporters filled the street. When the crowd discovered that wreaths from President Arroyo and Speaker Jose de Venecia had been delivered, the gathering erupted,  ripping the wreaths apart and trampling the flowers. In one newspaper account, the arrangement from President Arroyo was “torched.”

The incident seems to have shocked both sides. The Philippines Daily Inquirer published an appalled editorial today. A piece in the Philippine Star is less conciliatory. On the question of whether the president should attend Poe’s funeral, scheduled for December 22, the Star’s writer calls Arroyo “the country’s most assiduous burol or funeral goer. But this time, discretion should prevail over valor.”

If a crowd will trample funeral flowers, no telling what else they’ll do.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Beauty at the Beginning, Beauty in the Middle, Beauty at the End

A group of Nashville volunteers turns the flowers from big occasions into bouquets for a hospice house.

Columnist Gail Kerr introduces us to Perenity, a human flower project if ever there was one.

The program originated in Alabama and traveled to Tennessee with Harriet Karro. She joined forces with Kristen Taylor and others to reproduce the Birmingham “flower ministry” in Nashville, picking up floral arrangements after lavish events, retrieving and reviving the healthy flowers, and delivering them to Alive Hospice, a residence for people in their final months of life.

Perenity has “recycled flowers from former U.S. Postmaster General Marvin Runyon’s funeral, the Belle Meade Fall Fest and a number of big weddings. They’ve created and delivered, on average, 100 flower arrangements a week.”

If the idea of salvaged flowers sounds dreary to you, consider that many of the fresh flowers you buy today were cut on another continent two weeks ago. They, and we too, are traveling through time. The difference is the hospice patients know they are dying (unlike roses, lilies, and those of us who keep whistling in the dark).

Serenely, perennially, ‘‘it sort of comes full circle,” Harriet Karro says. The people at Alive Hospice savor their bouquets now and say, “When I die, donate my flowers to Perenity.’’ 

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Princely Resistance: A White Carnation

The Netherlands laid to rest its rakish Prince Bernhard today. The world will miss his elan, and his white carnation.

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands died December 1 of cancer. His funeral took place today in Delft, where he was laid to rest in the crypt of the House of Orange.

Bernhard, born in 1911, was a German prince who met the Netherlands’ Princess Juliana at the Olympic Games in Austria. They married in 1937.

When Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940, Bernhard, who had been a member of the SS, shot at German planes from the palace gardens. After the royal family escaped to London, he led the Dutch resistance from England and flew with the RAF.

What does all this have to do with flowers?

Bernhard was a bon vivant, ever the dapper dresser with a white carnation boutonniere.

“On 29 June 1940, the first birthday of Prince Bernhard during the occupation, a large crowd came to the Noordeinde Palace to lay flowers at the Palace and at the statue of William of Orange. Many members of the crowd sported the white carnation, as worn by Prince Bernhard on his lapel. This day was thenceforth known as Anjerdag, or carnation day.”

The German occupiers cracked down, stripping portraits of the royals from public buildings and outlawing displays of allegiance to the royal house. Then, in defiance, “many people asked Prince Bernhard to continue wearing his carnation.”

And he did, for 64 more years, to meet President Kennedy, at state celebrations, to the funeral of his wife, Queen Juliana, who died earlier this year. As his body lay in state this week at Noordeinde Palace in The Hague, a white carnation rested on top of the Dutch flag.

In his later years, the dashing Prince lost some of his lustre when he was implicated in a bribery scandal. To his credit, Bernhard was a founder of the World Wildlife Fund and an outspoken advocate of conservation.

He also looked mighty handsome with his white carnation, “princely” you might say.

Prince Bernhard
1911-2004