Once upon a time, there was a young girl in Mexico named Pepita.

And as Christmas arrived, Pepita visited her village church for Christmas services

and to leave an offering at the church's nativity scene.

The only problem was that she had no offering to offer. She couldn't show up

empty-handed, not for an occasion like this, so the best that little Pepita could do was gather

whatever weeds she could pull up from the roadside and form them into a crude and rather

shabby bouquet. Pepita felt ashamed that she had nothing better to offer, but according to the legend,

she went up toward the nativity scene, knelt down to leave her bouquet of weeds, and as she did,

those weeds miraculously transformed into bright red flowers, with large, pointy petals

growing in a shape that vaguely suggested a star. The same flowers that

had long been prized as much for their beauty as for their use as medicine and pigmentation. They

were once widely used for their sticky white sap known as latex, which was believed to treat

fevers and headaches. Others used the leaves to make red or purple

die. And that flower, which had been known by many names, because of that legend, would go on

to be known as the floor de Noche Buena, the flower of Christmas Eve. Around this same time,

Franciscan monks in a Mexican town began using these flowers in their

nativity processions. And for generations, the legend of Pepita and her humble offering of a bouquet

of weeds was part of the Christmas celebration for many communities in Mexico. And that's where

it all could have stayed. A regional tradition based on a regional legend and involving a flower that grows in that region.

But of course it didn't stay there.

Those bright red flowers with a pointy leaves are, of course, that ubiquitous flower we now know as a poinsettia.

And the story about how it came to America, how it got its name change,

...