The Legends of Christmas Flowers

Special days like Christmas should be well-adorn by beautiful and fragrant flowers of every kind and color. There are a lot of florists who do custom-made flower arrangements for all occasions. There are selections of flowers that are linked with Christmas. Among all others, the Mexican Poinsettia which is traditionally used for Christmas decorations add charisma to the cheerful occasion. Poinsettia is the local flower of Mexico and is quite known by a number of names like ‘Flower of the Holy Night’, and ‘Flame Leaf’ and sometimes called as ‘Christmas flower’, and ‘Lobster flower’. These flowers look delicate in their bright red shade yet finding them in other colors like white and pink is also a common sight. The star-shaped bracts are supposed to represent the Star of Bethlehem. It has been named to honor the previous US ambassador of Mexico, Dr. Joel R. Poinsett who brought the flower to the United States when he came back home in 1835 from his ambassadorship. Legend has it that Dr. Poinsett had such strong affection for the flower that he committed the last years of his life to making the “poinsettia”, a worldwide symbol for Christmas.

Of course, there are other flowers too aside from Poinsettia. These includes the Christmas cactus with its green leaves and pink flowers, holly with its red berries, the Christmas Rose, the popular Christmas tree, and thee Christmas garland, a custom brought into America from Europe by the pioneering settlers and of course the Mistletoe, which is a symbol of peace, goodwill and love. Some of these flowers have lengthy myths linked with its origin as the Christmas flower. The tale of Poinsettia comes from Mexico. It is said that two poverty stricken children, Maria and Pablo who cherished Christmas and always looked forward to it would be unhappy as they couldn’t have enough money to offer anything in the church to convey their love and appreciation towards Baby Jesus. One Christmas Eve as the two kids set forth for the church service, they decided to pull out some roadside weeds to give it as a gift to Baby Jesus, throughout the performance of the manger scene. As they put their gift around the manger, the green leaves amazingly changed its colors into bright red petals and very soon the manger was surrounded by star-shaped flowers, currently known as the Poinsettia.

Christmas rose also known as the Snow or Winter Rose, is conventionally viewed as the true Christmas flower. This flower is associated with the story of the birth of the Jesus Christ and how a small shepherdess named Madelon, eager of offering a gift to meet the new born King, was sanctified by an angel with a fine-looking white flower tipped with pink, soon after named as the Christmas Rose. The idea of the Christmas tree as a fundamental part of Christmas, has its beginnings in medieval times in Germany where there was a practice of decorating an evergreen with apples to represent the “Paradise tree”. Countless of years before the commemoration of Christmas began, the Germans used evergreens to adorn their homes. They believed that these trees denote life and immortality and would keep their homes from evil on the coming year ahead.

So it’s true that Christmas flowers with its tale and splendor blossoms to glorify the birth of Lord Jesus Christ and thereby convert this pious occasion from being further commercialized.