Most of us realize that Valentine's Day is an chance to express love with flowers. It is the biggest season for florists, who plan all year for the extravaganza that demands roses in particular but also all sorts of spring blooms. Today many just buy red roses and send red heart-shaped boxes of candy because they are so available. However, the red rose has long been used to signify deep passion, an emotion that goes far beyond friendship or familial love.
However, Memorial Day has its very beginnings in a floral story. An American man was so touched by watching women take flowers to the graves of Civil War soldiers, placing a single blossom on every resting place of the fallen, that he went to the nation's capital with the idea of a national day of remembrance. Called Decoration Day at first and designated the 30th of May, the day now honors the dead of every American war and is set for the last Monday in May. Poppies also symbolize remembrance for North Americans, taken from the poem 'In Flanders Fields'.
Easter is marked with floral bouquets in churches and on festive tables spread for the annual feast at the end of Lent. White Easter lilies represent purity, and all the spring cultivated and wild blossoms celebrate the renewal of life and the end of winter. May Day is another time when baskets of blooms hung on the door hark back to pagan festivals that also marked the end of the harsh and dangerous winter months and the beginning of new growth and plenty.
The Victorian age revived the older languages of flowers that had been part of oriental and Greek and Roman cultures. Specific types were chosen for the message they sent, with red and orange meaning passion, yellow denoting jealousy, white innocence, pink youthful beauty, and lavender the beginnings of love or a tribute to the grace of mature femininity. Rue denoted regret, and the name has come to mean the emotion as well as the wildflower.
There are many legends that have grown up around the beauty of flowering plants. The poinsettia is said to have been an unobtrusive weed until presented on the altar to honor the birth of Christ, when the humble offering blossomed into exotic beauty. Knowing this makes the showy bracts, with long-lasting holiday colors, even more suitable for the season.
All holidays are good reasons to celebrate with floral arrangements. Going home for the holidays? Take a bouquet or a flowering plant as a hostess gift. Celebrate spring with daffodils and tulips, Independence Day with bright floral and ribbon creations, the reasons for thanksgiving with radiant fall asters and dahlias, and the winter holidays with vibrant poinsettias and exotic orchids.
Flower and holiday traditions go together all through history, as blooming plants stir human emotions.