Where Did The Tradition Of Giving Flowers Started

By Paul Scott

No tradition helps in communicating human emotions in a better way than gifting flowers or bouquets. People often go to a florist to buy flowers for all occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, to congratulate someone, to apologize, or just to make a person happy.

It is believed that this custom has origins in prehistoric traditions whose conclusive proof has been dug up by excavators at excavation sites. History, legends and folklore going back to ancient China, Greece, Rome and Egypt display flowers to be an undeniable part of social customs. Gifting flowers was considered the best means to communicate one's thoughts in these cultures. The ancient Greeks even considered some flowers to be associated with divinity.

The Middle Ages saw a furtherance of this custom, and France and England were chiefly responsible for transferring this legacy down the ages. The present custom of giving a specific significance to each flower was imported to the West from Turkey, from where the French and the British acquired it and disseminated it in Europe.

Flower giving gained much significance among the Victorians who widely indulged in this custom. As blatant expression of emotions was considered objectionable during the Victorian period, the genteel Victorians cultivated great restraint in language and they compensated this control over language by their gesture of gifting flowers to convey feelings.

This period saw the formulation of guidelines for gifting flowers or bouquets that we still follow. For instance, a bouquet of red roses bought from a florist would generate a rather hostile reaction form your beloved if you gifted it to her upside down. The reason being that while red roses stand for love, gifting them upside down symbolizes resentment. These ideas were so in fashion that in the 19th century, several books on the language of flowers were published and widely read.

Time has not been able to erode this tradition, and people in the present times still consider flowers to be the most effective means to express their emotions. Through gradual evolution over the years, we have arrived at a stage where a lot of flowers now have some significance and gifting flowers or bouquets has to be done according to certain rules and regulations. Gifting red roses is still considered as a passionate demonstration of love, and white lilies are believed to represent purity and beauty. A lone marigold flower is regarded as an expression of grief, on the other hand friendship is best expressed by a yellow coloured rose.

Once, only specific flowers could be grown only in specific zones or terrains, which is not the case in this modern age of science and technology. If you are located in Singapore, then a visit to a Singapore flower shop will surely provide you with the best quality flowers, both local as well as exotic varieties, guaranteed to express your emotions to your dear ones in a beautiful manner. - 30520

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