GREENFIELD — Floral Affairs shared a similar mission to Santa Claus this holiday season. But instead of delivering toys to children, the flower shop crew focused on brightening the spirits of older adults with flower deliveries.
“Welcome to the craziness!” Floral Affairs owner Becky Guyer said with a laugh, stepping between boxes of 660 poinsettias at the Greenfield store.
The stacks represented only a fraction of the flowers sent to seniors at nursing homes across Franklin and Hampshire counties and the North Quabbin region, including Quabbin Valley Healthcare in Athol, LaBelle’s Rest Home in Shelburne Falls, The Arbors at Greenfield and Amherst, Hadley Pointe in Hadley, the Center for Extended Care at Amherst, Greenfield’s Charlene Manor Extended Care, RegalCare at Greenfield, and Greenfield Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in Greenfield. In total, the Floral Affairs team delivered 795 poinsettias, the largest load yet.
After expanding Floral Affairs to a second location in Amherst in July, Guyer decided to expand the holiday tradition’s reach into Hampshire County as well, surprising 325 more seniors than last year.
“With us opening up a second location in Amherst, how could we not take on Amherst homes, too?” Guyer asked.
All hands were on deck for the holiday tradition, she said. Two months before deliveries started on Dec. 18, Guyer ordered the hundreds of flowers. Once the poinsettias were at the store, Guyer, her friends from high school and employees at the Greenfield and Amherst stores packed up the holiday plants for the nine nursing homes.
“It’s a big operation,” Guyer said inside the Greenfield store. Her golden retriever Jake sauntered to Guyer with stray poinsettia leaves stuck to his fur.
Donors helped fund the holiday tradition through Floral Affairs’ website, but Guyer noted that the flower shop plans to absorb the remaining costs if donations miss the target.
“It’s not a money thing by any means,” Guyer said. Inside the stores, the poinsettias sell for $15, while donors bought flowers for senior recipients at only $6 per plant, $4 less than last year.
“Hopefully we can get people to sponsor a little bit more and make a lot of people smile,” Guyer said. “Every little bit helps.”
According to the florist, the idea for the holiday tradition first sprouted around the holidays 10 years ago. During one of her weekly stops with her husband at Quabbin Valley Healthcare to visit her mother-in-law, Guyer noticed something in the nursing home.
“The amount of people that didn’t have visitors just struck a cord,” Guyer remembered. “So my husband and I thought we could make a little bit of a difference.”
In the decade since, the shop has packed boxes with the signature red and green leaves and petals of the holidays, including Norfolk pines and red carnations, to ensure seniors feel celebrated at Christmastime. This year, Guyer settled on poinsettias, the most popular Christmas plant, according to Farmer’s Almanac.
Although its blushing leaves have become a symbol for the holidays, the first poinsettias bloomed in the heat of southern Mexico. The Aztecs called the plant “cuetlaxochitl,” meaning “mortal flower that perishes and withers like all that is pure” in their Nahuatl language, according to the University of Illinois. With the bright leaves, the Aztecs created reddish-purple fabric dye and treated fevers, skin conditions and other illnesses with the sap. National Geographic reported that descendants of the Maya still boil poinsettia leaves to heal obstetrical or gynecological hemorrhaging and snake bites.
In the flower’s first connection to Christmas, Mexican lore tells the tale of a child named “Pepita” bringing a bouquet of weeds to the Christmas Eve service. Watching the child with sympathy, the angels opened the weeds into the signature scarlet leaves.
The plant earned the name “poinsettia” when botanist, world traveler and U.S. congressman Joel Poinsett visited Mexico in the 1820s and spotted the red flower in the churches of Franciscan missionaries. Fascinated by the bright flower, Poinsett sent the plant home to his plantation near Charleston before propagating them himself.
Centuries later, Paul Ecke Sr., an agriculturist in southern California, discovered the secret to growing poinsettias in a range of shades beyond the classic crimson. On a mission to brand poinsettias as the pine tree’s competitor for Christmas’s fixture plant, Ecke’s son, Paul Ecke Jr., persuaded television studios to fill the sets of seasonal specials with poinsettias, including the display behind Johnny Carson’s “The Tonight Show” desk.
With Floral Affairs’ deliveries, hundreds of local seniors received the Christmas symbol that has captivated so many cultures. Guyer said she wished she could deliver the flowers herself, but due to the busy season for the flower shop, the nursing home staff lend a hand.
“We leave that to the activities [directors] to make everybody smile,” Guyer said, “and hopefully they pass along the message.”