The Flower of Myths Has Taken Root in Pasadena History
The Rose Parade has a long, colorful history, but long before Pasadena was placed on any map, the Cherokee Indians weaved legends about the white roses that bear their name.
The poet Sappho called the rose the Queen of Flowers 2 1/2 millennia ago, and the ancient Romans used thousands of buds to decorate their public games and wreathe the winners. One story about the depraved and short-lived Emperor Elagabalus accuses him of suffocating several dinner guests in a shower of rose petals.
The San Gabriel Valley was sometimes called “our Italy” in the late 19th Century, and the Roman example inspired Charles Holder of the Valley Hunt Club to stage the first Tournament of Roses in 1890. Pasadena had fewer than 5,000 residents then.
Before the football games began in 1902, foot and bicycle races, tugs of war, sack races and other competitions were held. There were also pony and burro races, presumably for want of chariots.
By 1905, the first Rose Queen was chosen, and the true romance between Pasadena and the rose began to bloom.
Cultivated for its beauty and perfume for thousands of years both in the East and the West, the mystical rose has taken on symbolic meanings and is celebrated in song and literature.
The Greeks believed that roses were created to greet Aphrodite, the goddess of love known as Venus to the Romans, as she rose from the foaming waves near Cyprus. The Florentine artist Botticelli blows pink roses toward her perfect body in his famous painting depicting that scene.
Red roses are traditionally associated with love, especially its more painful aspects. One myth tells how white roses grew from the tears Venus shed over her dead love, the beautiful Adonis. When she tried to leave him, as one poet described it,
Her naked foot a rude thorn tore, From sting of briar it bled, And where the blood ran evermore It dyed the roses red. Less romantic myths record the playful Cupid or a drunken Bacchus spilling red wine over the white blossoms.
Milton was following Hebrew tradition in referring to the rose as having no thorns in Eden. Early Christian theologians seized upon this theme, and St. Basil developed a theory that the thorns keep multiplying as humans sink ever deeper into sin.
To fight what it perceived as its sensuous and pagan associations, the Catholic Church made white roses into a symbol of purity for the Virgin Mary, who is often represented with lilies or roses; their scent is supposed to overcome the stench of sin.
Roses usually accompany the Virgin’s miracles and appearances. The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico’s holiest shrine, was built when Mary is said to have appeared on a bare hilltop to an Indian named Juan Diego.
The local bishop did not believe the apparition, so the Virgin directed Diego to gather up the roses that suddenly covered the entire hill. When Diego delivered the roses in his apron, it was found to have the full-length imprint of the Madonna.
The cult of the rose extended to the Ottoman Empire. As late as the turn of the century, pregnant women in Palestine placed the rose of Jericho in water with the beginning of labor pains, hoping its blooming would bring them a successful delivery.
Biblical scholars doubt that the roses mentioned in the Bible--in particular, the rose of Sharon and the rose of Jericho--were really roses.
The latter, an annual which grows in the arid regions of North Africa and Arabia, droops its leaves with the onset of the dry season.
The branches curl inward into a wicker ball, the roots wither away, and like the tumbleweed, the seemingly dead plant rides the wind to distant water, which will restore its original shape. Hence, this rose has also been called the resurrection plant.
Author Peter Hay lives in Mt. Washington. His most recent book is “MGM--When the Lion Roars,” from Turner Publishing.
