Certain Christmas custom never seem to go out of style . Along with garland , gingerbread cooky , and reruns ofA Christmas Storysits the Christmas star , a blood-red - tinged leafy agreement that ’s become synonymous with the vacation . Upwards of100 millionof them are sold in the six weeks before December 25 .
Why do people consort the potted plant with seasonal cheer ? Chalk it up to some brilliant marketing .
In 1900 , a German immigrant named Albert Ecke wasplanningto move his family to Fiji . Along the direction , they became enamored of the beautiful sights found in Los Angeles — specifically , the wild - growing poinsettia , which was named after Joel Roberts Poinsett , the U.S.-Mexican embassador who first brought it to the States in 1828 . Ecke ascertain the appeal of the plant ’s bright crimson leaves that blossomed in winter ( it ’s not actually a flower , despite the coarse assumption ) and began marketing it from roadside stand to local agriculturalist as " the Christmas plant . "
The response was so strong that poinsettias became the Ecke class business enterprise , with their crop make up more than 90 percent of all poinsettias sell throughout most of the twentieth century : Ecke , his son Paul , and Paul ’s Word , Paul Jr. , offer a unique single - stem organization that resist up to merchant marine , which their competitors could n’t duplicate . When Paul III took over the occupation in the 1960s , he began send placement to idiot box networks for use during their vacation special . In a invaluable bit of advertising , stars like Ronald Reagan , Dinah Shore , and Bob Hope were sharing screen time with the plant , conduct millions of Americans to associate it with the holiday .
While the Ecke single - stem closed book was eventually cracked by other florists — it involved grafting two stem to make one — and their market share dwindle , their innovative marketing see to it that the poinsettia would forever be tie to Christmas .
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