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Thanks to traditional marigolds, Day of the Dead has become a lucrative event for Chicago flower sellers

Thanks to traditional marigolds, Day of the Dead has become a lucrative event for Chicago flower sellers

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The flowers Anahy Olivera sells at her Little Village shop are usually intended for those who can enjoy their bright colors and sweet scents. All last month she received boxes of flowers that were said to enchant even those who can no longer.

Its name is Cempasúchil or Mexican marigold. Olivera began selling bouquets of the bright orange and yellow flowers weeks before Día de Muertos, celebrated Nov. 1 and 2. She estimates she will sell $5,000 worth of the flowers leading up to the holiday.

For flower shop owners like Olivera, who owns Flowers With Love at 3707 W. 26th St., marigold profits during the Day of the Dead season trail only those during Valentine's Day and Mother's Day celebrations.

“We are selling them all this month until November 2nd, but there are still people who come and buy them on November 3rd,” she said. “So these days are also good for sales for us.

The marigolds are used to decorate altars filled with ofrendas, or offerings for deceased loved ones, whose spirits are said to return to the land of the living during the holidays and are guided home by the flower's earthy scent.

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A bunch of marigolds at Flowers with Love at 3707 W. 26th St in Little Village.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times

The celebration enjoys a strong presence in Chicago, where Mexicans make up 21.5% of the population, according to census data. Starting around October, the shaggy blooms of cempasúchil protrude from store windows and shopping carts in Little Village, Belmont Cragin, Pilsen and other neighborhoods with a strong Hispanic presence.

Olivera, 38, said marigolds also color her annual Day of the Dead altar at home. Her husband, Carlos Miramontes, was the store's original owner, but after he died of COVID-19 in 2020, the holiday took on a deeper meaning for her.

Now his photo stands among the bright flowers and pictures of deceased relatives.

“We Mexicans take our culture very seriously,” she said. “We love to celebrate, especially death. It sounds strange, but Mexicans celebrate death. That’s what ofrendas are about, honoring death and those who are not here.”

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Show owner Anahy Olivera prepares a bouquet of cempasuchil at Flowers with Love at 3707 W. 26th St in Little Village.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times

Stories that have been passed down through the centuries

The importance of Cempasúchil goes back centuries. The flower is native to Mexico and Central America, and its name roughly means “flower with many petals” in the Aztec language Nahuatl.

The people of the Aztec Empire in central Mexico used cempasúchil in their celebrations and rituals honoring the dead. Its glowing petals are said to contain the light of the sun and lead the souls of the deceased to altars in their honor.

After the Spanish conquest of the empire, “the celebrations changed and began to be synchronized with the Catholic Church's All Souls celebrations,” said Veronica Moraga Guerra, an associate teaching professor of Spanish at the University of Chicago.

Cesareo Moreno, chief curator of the National Museum of Mexican Art, believes folklore is one explanation for why the flower underwent this transformation.

According to an Aztec legend, two youths, Xochitl and Huitzilin, fell deeply in love. But when Huitzilin died in the war, Xochitl begged the sun god to reunite her with him. The sun god was fascinated by her grief and turned her into a cempasúchil. Huitzilin returned as a hummingbird and, attracted by the scent of the flower, perched on its leaves and allowed them to bloom.

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An “Ofrenda” or offering to Guadalupe Jiménez from the Jiménez family, Leo Parga, Araceli Muñoz, Mireya Bautista and Héctor Martínez, on display at the National Museum of Mexican Art in the Pilsen district. It is part of an exhibition called “Día de Muertos, Living Presence.”

Moreno believes the flower's role in Día de Muertos has a lot to do with practicality. “I think the main reason it’s been so popular is because it blooms this time of year,” he said.

But he added that the tragic love story of the Aztec youth was most likely passed down to preserve the flower's meaning for younger generations.

“As humans, we love our legends, right? We love our stories, and what do you tell your children? How do you convey these beliefs or these concepts by telling them stories,” Moreno said.

An increase in popularity and sales

Spencer Campbell, director of the plant clinic at Morton Arboretum, said some of the flower's special properties have helped promote the crop for centuries in Mexico and Central America, where it grows abundantly.

“They grow quickly and honestly require minimal care. All you need to do is provide plenty of sunlight and avoid overwatering,” he said. And it's useful. The flower was used in pre-Columbian times to cure stomach ailments and its secretions have natural pest control properties.

These benefits and its attractive colors have led to the flower being cultivated all over the world, even as far away as China. But Mexico still grows them by the ton. According to the Mexican government, the country produced over 16,000 tons of the plant in 2022.

Much of Olivera's inventory comes from Mexico, but she is also supplied by Chicago-based floral importer and distributor Kennicott Brothers. The company sources its marigolds from California during the Day of the Dead season.

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Zenia Ruiz prepares a bouquet of cempasuchil at Flor del Monte at 1951 W. 22nd on the Lower West Side.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times

As the holiday has become mainstream in recent years, the company has seen a significant increase in flower sales.

Kennicott processed 1,206 stems in Chicago from Oct. 20 to Oct. 31 in 2016, according to Lisa Nason, the company's marketing director. During the same period last year, the company sold 4,844 stems of the flower in the city. For regular shoppers, prices may vary depending on location, but the cost for a handful of stems starts around $10 to $20.

“This year we are likely to go through even more,” Nason said.

Zenia Ruiz, who co-owns Flor del Monte with her mother Rosalva at 1951 W. 22nd Place in Pilsen, has also seen a rise. Her store only offers the flowers for two days at the end of October. Still, they will sell about 200 bundles at $17 each over those two days.

This is a big jump from the store's early years. Around the time it opened 23 years ago, they sold about 10 grapes during the Día de Muertos season, she said. They continue to offer cempasúchil because demand is high.

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Cempasuchil at Flor del Monte 1951 W. 22nd Place in the Lower West Side.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times

“One of my favorite parts of those days was that when guests came to pick up, they would be overwhelmed by this wonderful smell and beautiful bright orange,” she remembers. “You could see that people were really affected by it.”

The rising popularity of the holiday and flower in recent years can be attributed to several factors, but Olivera and Moreno both credited the 2017 Disney film “Coco,” which was set during the holiday and won an Oscar.

The new awareness has been a blessing and a curse, Moreno said. He lamented that some of the holiday symbols have been commercialized for mass consumption. Moreno pointed to sugar skulls, cute and decorative skulls in bright colors that are now sold at major retailers like Target.

But he said that might be more difficult with a flower. Unlike a skull, which is easily associated with death, the cempasúchil requires one to look beyond the beauty to realize its significance.

“It's easy to consume the sugar skull as a symbol of Day of the Dead, but for Cempasúchil I think it would be for people who know the tradition and what it means,” he said. “It’s really a powerful ritual and we don’t want to lose that.”

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Shop owner Anahy Olivera stands for a photo with marigold bouquets at Flowers with Love at 3707 W. 26th St in Little Village.

Anthony Vazquez/Sun Times

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