I’m starting off my annual 12 Gays of Christmas series a day early this year. Since the traditional 12 days of Christmas actually start the day after the holiday, a stupid practice I dispensed with in last year’s homage, there really is no good reason why I can’t move the whole thing up a day anyway. However, besides giving me an extra excuse for posting holiday naked male flesh on Christmas Eve, there is a good reason to begin this year’s salute today. Today is National Poinsettia Day in the U.S. Because while we are busy getting ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus, nothing makes the season a bit more bright than celebrating the death of a former Secretary of War.

Among his other lesser know accomplishments, Joel Roberts Poinsett was the first United States Minister to Mexico. He’s best known for having introduced poinsettias to the United States in 1825. Of course being the good neighbors that we are, we didn’t just rip off Mexico’s flora, we ripped off one of the country’s holiday traditions too. The folk living south of the border considered the poinsettia as a symbol of the Christmas season long before we did.

In Mexico, the story is told of a poor little local girl named Maria, or Pepita, or her and her brother Pablo, or if you prefer the non-fish version, Pablo and Mario, who lived in a small village and had barely enough to eat two full meals a day (cue sad Xmas music). As Christmas time approached, festivities, parades, and parties in the village attracted the children. The gaiety of the season in itself was quite charismatic. Moreover, a large manger scene was being set up in the village church and all the children were eager to go to Baby Jesus and give him the best present ever. Mario, Pablo, etal. also wanted to give expensive presents to the Holy Child but that they had no money to buy the presents and had nothing that they could gift, or re-gift, to the child.

On Christmas Eve [insert your choice of character(s) here] set out for church a little earlier than others to attend the service. Since they had nothing to give to the child, they thought of plucking some weeds that were growing along the road to make a soft bed for Baby Jesus to decorate his crib. Or an angel hearing the child/children crying, appeared and suggested he/she/they pick some weeds to give to the little lord Jesus. (Multiple options are always good for traditional tales.) While they were still decorating the crib of the Baby Jesus, other children arrived on the scene. Now, children can be very cruel when it comes to teasing and making fun of others, which today is considered a hate crime and is punishable by time in jail. Maria, Pepita, Mario, and Pablo (singularly or as part of a duo) broke into tears of shame and helplessness. And then a miracle occurred.

Either from the power of the tots’ tears falling on the weeds, or because the Star of Bethlehem passed overhead – again, your choice – the weeds burst into bright red petals that looked like stars and were so magnificent that everyone was awed by their beauty. And the poinsettia, formally a symbol of Aztec sacrifice, became a symbol of the blood of Christ (though other than being red I’m not sure how or why that connection was made) and quickly associated itself with the Christmas season.

Now you may wonder why everyone was so amazed when said weeds that grew all over the place and their red flowers (which are actually leaves, not flowers) would have been rather commonplace to the villagers. Or you may be suspicious that said weeds were actually a combo of poinsettias and marijuana, which also grows well in Mexico and is even more celebrated around the world, causing the villagers to get a contact high. But that’s not the point. This is Mexico’s Christmas story. Even if they can’t remember who was involved or what actually happened. Which tends to give weight to the poinsettia/cannabis argument. Nonetheless, in the true spirit of the Christmas holidays, we ripped off their tradition. Ho, ho ho.

The story alone wasn’t enough, so Joel Roberts Poinsett also brought the actual plant north where neither it nor Mexico’s Christmas story flourished. But 75 years later a German immigrant, Albert Ecke, opened a dairy and orchard outside of Los Angeles where, intrigued by the plant, he also grew poinsettias and sold them on the streets. Three generations later, his grandson, Paul Ecke, Jr., began marketing the plant as a Christmas decoration, shipping free plants to television stations for them to display on air from Thanksgiving to Christmas. He also appeared on television programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials to promote poinsettias. Thanks to Hollywood, and the Ecke family’s marketing scheme, poinsettias became associated with Christmas in the U.S.

Even though Christmas is a Christian holiday and Christians don’t believe in karma, the story of the poinsettia and the $250 million of dollars spent over the holiday sales the plant is responsible for, has a final, fitting, chapter. Part of the Eckes’ success in capturing the bulk of the poinsettia market was a grafting technique the family came up with to produce a plant that was compact and bursting with leaves. That little secret method was published by a university researcher in the mid-1900s, allowing competitors to flourish, particularly those using low-cost labor in Mexico. They may not be able to remember the exact details of a holiday tradition that goes back hundreds of years, but growing plants worth millions of dollars as an industry for sales in the U.S. is something Mexico has become an expert at.

So, Happy Poinsettia Day to you all. And you now only have eleven more days of reading my informative series of posts about the Christmas holidays. You may want to go buy some of the latest weeds shipped up from Mexico for that and the rest of your holiday experience.

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