Straightup2’s Weblog

Hello Sweet Ones!

This week I received a request for a topic for my column and so to honor that request I did some research on the origin and meaning of why we give poinsettias at Christmas.

I found a cute little legend of how the poinsettia came to be, now there is not solid tangible truth to this story but it’s still cute and holds a meaning all it’s own. This story was copied directly from the website for Paul Ecke Farms, the largest poinsettia growers in the United States.

A charming story is told of Pepita, a poor Mexican girl who had no gift to present the Christ Child at Christmas Eve Services. As Pepita walked slowly to the chapel with her cousin Pedro, her heart was filled with sadness rather than joy.

“I am sure, Pepita, that even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes,” said Pedro consolingly.

Not knowing what else to do, Pepita knelt by the roadside and gathered a handful of common weeds, fashioning them into a small bouquet. Looking at the scraggly bunch of weeds, she felt more saddened and embarrassed than ever by the humbleness of her offering. She fought back a tear as she entered the small village chapel.

As she approached the altar, she remembered Pedro’s kind words: “Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes.” She felt her spirit lift as she knelt to lay the bouquet at the foot of the nativity scene.

Suddenly, the bouquet of weeds burst into blooms of brilliant red, and all who saw them were certain that they had witnessed a Christmas miracle right before their eyes.

From that day on, the bright red flowers were known as the Flores de Noche Buena, or Flowers of the Holy Night, for they bloomed each year during the Christmas season.

Today, the common name for this plant is the poinsettia!

The plant that we call the poinsettia was originally used by the Aztecs for several other more practical uses other than decoration. Native to Central America, the plant called cuetlaxichitl was very abundant in a region of Southern Mexico called Taxco del Alarcon. It grows there in the wild and the plants can be anywhere from 2 to 10 or 12 feet in height. Its beautiful red leaves give it a festive appearance and it blooms in mid December around the holiday season.  From the red leaves, yes the red parts are not the flowers they are just the leaves at the ends of the branches; the real flowers are the little yellow things in the very ends of the stems. Anyway, from the red leaves or bracts they extracted a purplish dye for use in dying textiles and making cosmetics. The milky white sap that the plant exudes was used to treat fevers, today we call this latex.

We may never have ever seen such an exquisite flower if it hadn’t been for one man, Joel Roberts Poinsett (you have an idea now why they call it a poinsettia?) Poinsett was appointed as the first United States Ambassadore to Mexico by President Adams and served from 1825-1829. The son of a French physician, Poinsett had attended medical school himself, but his first passion was botany. An interesting side note, later in his life Mr. Poinsett founded the National Institute for the Promotion of Science and the Useful Arts, today we know it as the Smithsonian Institution.

Poinsett brough this beautiful plant back to America with him and began to grow it in his own hothouses on his in Greenville, South Carolina plantation. He began to grow more plants and give them as gifts to friends and send them to botanical gardes around the country.

One year a plant was given to a gentleman from Philadelphia named John Bartram who in turn gave it to a nurseryman friend of his, Robert Buist. Mr Bruist is thought to be the first person to have sold the plant under its botanical name, Euphorbia pulcherrima (meaning “the most beautiful Euphorbia”. Around 1836 the plant came to be known by the name we call it, the poinsettia.

Today we even have a holiday named for the poinsettia, December 12^th, the date of Joel Poinsett’s death, Congress declared this day as Poinsettia Day. Of course with all the bowl mania surrounding college football it only seems fitting that there is a holiday game called The Poinsettia Bowl. This year the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl is on Tuesday, December 23^rd and features Boise State vs TCU. By the time you read this the game will already have been played and you will know the outcome.

Although the poinsettia that Joel Poinsett brough to America was red, it has since been cross-pollinated into a vast array of colors that range the whole spectrum from white to red to pink to blue and green and even lavender. There are even variegated varieties.

The Paul Ecke Ranch in Encinitas, California is the premier poinsettia sellers in most of the world. They handle 70% or all the flowers distribution in the United States and 50% of sales worldwide. http://www.pauleckepoinsettias.com/

Enjoy your holiday season, God Bless you all and Merry Christmas!

Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza

I want to know what is wrong with Christians in America! I am not talking about gay rights or gay issues so don’t get your feathers ruffled just yet. I am talking about all this garbage about Christians standing quietly by and letting their rights be taken and then step back and cry “THEY” took them. Nobody took anything, we stood silently by and let them go. I mean honestly, if we want to totally believe that one single woman, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, could get prayer removed from our schools we are gullable enough to believe anything.

We stand here and watch the grand parade go by thinking oh isn’t that wonderful and something great they are trying to do, and then pow we wake up from our rose colored dream and find that something we truly cared about is gone. Then we want to sit here and whimper and whine and moan about how while we were sleeping they came along and stole it. Then we wring our hands and pace back and forth and try to think of a way to get back what we lost. Something a lot harder than preventing the problem in the first place.

Our government and our nation was founded on priciples of religious freedom. More Americans claim they are Christians than don’t and we have such a diverse group of religions and yet those who are not Christian can get things accomplished that go against the very foundation of our land. Then we wonder why God is allowing us to fall on financial difficulties and letting the Devil afflict us with diseases that we thought were long gone. We need to be taught a lesson and given a wake up call. Now what will we do about it?

First I think we need to stop this garbage about not saying the pledge of allegience because it includes the words “one nation under God” in it. We need to shout about them wanting to take “In God We Trust” off our money. We need to jump and down and outright scream about them even daring to suggest that Barack Obama omit the words “so help me God” from his oath of office.

The world makes us timid and willing to hide in a corner while those who oppose us shout from street corners. We are called extremists and haters if we want to profess in public our love of God and our beliefs. The ACLU comes in and tells us we can’t say the pledge of allegience because it makes some athiest angry or we can’t have the ten commandments displayed because it offends people. Well tough, why do I believe in a government who allows me to have so called freedom of speech and religion and yet won’t allow me to say Merry Christmas or God Bless You when someone sneezes because God-forbid we offend an athiest or someone of another religion. They want me to accept them and their religious freedom while walking all over mine. Is this fair? I’ll just leave it at this.