Mum’s the word

Homecoming season is as much a holiday as Thanksgiving or Christmas to some Texans.

Dressing up at school, brilliant pep rallies and dates proposing in increasingly complex gestures, are all parts of the tradition.

However, while homecoming festivities might be fun, they are beginning to put an increasing strain on the pockets of Texas high schoolers and their parents. The coveted homecoming mum has grown in size and price but has decreased in its original sentiment.

Originally, mums were actual chrysanthemums, delicate flowers that only cost a few dollars. Now, the $100 tradition is a large, colorful, loud declaration that its wearer has a date.

While having a mum is exciting, and supports local businesses like Varsity Mums, the gesture is rarely one of affection. Instead, mums are often bought out of obligation. This is not to say that getting a mum has lost all meaning, it is simply a part of an old and loved tradition across Texas high schools.

However, many students go to the dance with a friend specifically to get a mum to wear the day before because no one wants to feel left out. This exclusion often is forgotten by anyone who does not feel it first hand. But walking the halls of Coppell High School the day of the homecoming game without a mum can be suffocating.

Mums can cost hundreds of dollars, a hefty price for a one-day-only accessory that will most likely end up in a landfill. Could not that money be used for some greater cause? If students used money they would typically set aside for a mum and garter for a donation and got a small pin or flower in place of the traditional piece, gloating excitement could be exchanged for a sentimentality no hundred-dollar gift can offer.

If mums were smaller and less expensive, the cost might fit the custom. But the price of the mum overpowers any meaning still left in the tradition. By no means should mums be completely removed from the homecoming festivities. They should, however, be rethought, and possibly restored to their previous, smaller, and genuinely sentimental selves.

Follow Amelia @ameliavanyo