Mum’s the word: It’s no secret that homecoming florals are bigger in Texas
Megan Martinka holds mums she made for the Marble Falls Mustangs homecoming game against the Jarrell Cougars on Sept. 5. The big mum on the left was for her daughter, Emma Clark, a senior at Marble Falls High School. She also makes mums for hire. She and other mum-makers can be found on Facebook Marketplace. Staff photo by Dakota Morrissiey
Megan Martinka’s living room in Granite Shoals explodes with ribbon every summer in preparation for local high school homecoming football games in the fall.
The frenzy of building homecoming mums from silk flowers and decorating them with ribbons, glitter, cutouts, toys, and trinkets began earlier than ever this year because homecoming games were earlier than ever. Marble Falls’ homecoming was Sept. 5; Burnet’s was Sept. 12; Faith Academy’s was Sept 19; and Llano’s is on a more traditional fall date of Oct. 3.
Homecoming mums are a (literally) growing Texas tradition that became popular in the 1950s and blew up in the state with the opening of the first Michaels craft store in 1973 in Dallas. Mum moms became empowered by easy and affordable access to the materials, moving mum-making from florist shops to kitchen tables.
What began as a tradition of pinning fresh corsages on dates made its first appearance in Texas in 1936 at a homecoming football game at Baylor University in Waco, according to an article in Texas Monthly.
Adorning chrysanthemums with ribbons followed in the 1950s and became such a craze that florist shops couldn’t stock enough blossoms for the fall homecoming season.
Enter the fake flower, available in all sizes. What was once a modest corsage became a colossus too heavy to pin on.
That’s where Texas took over. Bigger and better mums grew with the times and traditions. Size began to really matter in the 1990s as creative crafters added small toys, school mascots, and cutout names, slogans, and icons. Braided ribbons and rope had to be used to hang the bigger blossoms like necklaces.
The battle for the biggest heated up just last year when Georgetown’s East View High School built a homecoming mum that was twice the size of the current Guinness World Records holder, Lewisville High School near Dallas. The 2023 Lewisville mum, at over 290 square-feet, is still listed in the record books.
Marble Falls High School students got into the oversize mum-making game this year with a 37-foot creation consisting of 4,500 coffee filters, hundreds of feet of butcher paper, chicken-wire framing, and dozens of cardboard ornaments representing the school’s clubs and programs. The massive mum hung in the school’s common area through homecoming week.
Mum-maker Martinka thinks big, but not that big. She starts her annual summer craft craze with her daughters in mind. Emma Clark, 17, and Isabella Clark, 15, choose a different theme each year, while Martinka plans sizes and colors to reflect the girls’ grade levels and their personalities. Every homecoming mum that Mom has made for them (five each so far) hangs on a designated “mum wall.” They include Mustang purple and gold mini-mums for elementary school and larger school color blooms from middle school.
As a high school senior, Emma wore her biggest mum yet at this year’s homecoming, touting three large flowers and a color palette to match her tropical “Lilo & Stitch” movie theme. Sophomore Isabella chose Hello Kitty in pink and white with two flowers.
“Freshmen through junior year usually stick with school colors,” Martinka said. “Seniors do whatever they want. They go big.”
Boys also get in on the mum mania, but in a much smaller way.
“Boys wear a garter on their arm, like a bride’s garter,” Martinka said. “If a couple is dating, they usually have the garter and mum designed in matching colors and theme.”
The male version typically has the young man’s name, year of graduation, and any sports or extracurricular activities he’s involved in.
The very first homecoming football game is believed to have happened at the University of Missouri in 1911, although whether it involved corsages of any sort is unknown. A Mizzou football coach called on alumni to “come home” for a rival Missouri-Kansas game to boost attendance and school income.
Other schools dispute the claim. Alumni have been returning to campus for football games and other athletic events since the late 1800s. The University of Michigan hosted its first Alumni Game in 1897. Northern Illinois is believed to have first used the term “homecoming” in its school newspaper in 1906. Mums are not mentioned in reports on these gatherings until they appeared at Baylor.
The Texas homecoming tradition is catching on in Louisiana and Oklahoma, but outside of that, mum’s the word on mums.
“No one else really does them, not like Texas,” said Martinka, who is from Michigan. “When I talk about mums to people outside of Texas, or show them pictures, they can’t comprehend them. My family in Michigan loves to see my pictures.”
She has taken the tradition to her home state, making mums for her family and former band director.
“I moved here (Texas) and grabbed mum-making by the horns,” she said. “This is the coolest thing ever. I love seeing all the different mums people make. There are some amazing mum-makers out there.”
Mums can cost as little as $15 for small ones and $100 or more for the bigger ones, depending on the amount of materials required. To purchase a custom-made mum, search Facebook Marketplace for local sellers.