A Texas Sized Tradition
September 18, 2018
Fall for Texas means two things. Slightly cooler weather and the start of football season. What also comes with football, the tradition of homecoming and gorgeous yet ginormous mums.
With the weight of ribbons and other craft supplies on your neck, the real weight on your shoulders is on how big and beautiful your mum has to be. This Southern tradition comes with rules such as sizing and colors fit to match with what grade you are in.
Freshmen have the smallest for the purpose of them just heading into high school. Usually, their colors are the school’s assigned colors. They also can only have one flower in the middle. The flower resembles a chrysanthemum. The tradition started as a boy giving a chrysanthemum to his homecoming date.
The homecoming tradition started in Missouri. The evolution of the already enormous Mum calls for the changing of color schemes as the years go by. The most known example of this being seniors wearing white to signify their last year. The signature look also for seniors is to have extravagant mums that are true to the motto, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.” The senior mum generally calls for four chrysanthemums.
As the years roll by, people have been getting quite creative. From different shapes and colors and LED lights being added, to the center of the mum to be Texas shaped or even having more objects added like school activities being shown through to give the mum an inside look of the student’s interests and hobbies.
The opportunity to create a mum is amazing. The process can be stressful with money choices and creative thinking, but by the end, you have created a beautiful piece of school and individual pride.