The Poppy’s Forgotten Symbolism
Selling silk poppies began as an American tradition for Armistice Day
For the past few years I’ve been trying to import, or really repatriate, a popular British tradition: wearing lapel poppies for veterans’ organizations. It did start as an American practice.
A Canadian officer, Colonel John McCrae, wrote a poem for his fallen friend in WWI. In Flanders Fields was about a field of poppies that grew after a bloody battle. An American professor, Moina Belle Michael, thought it a wonderful tribute, so she designed and sewed some lapel poppies out of silk to remember the fallen. She donated the proceeds to veterans’ organizations.
She described the first lapel poppies in her 1941 autobiography:
That Saturday afternoon, before Armistice, November 9, 1918, I went down poppy hunting in New York City. After visiting several novelty shops which featured artificial flowers and failing to find red poppies, I went to Wanamaker’s. After searching in the flower collections I found a large red poppy, which I bought for my desk bud-vase and two dozen small silk red four-petaled poppies, fashioned after the wild poppies of Flanders. Having made the purchase I told the pretty little Jewess, who served me, why I was searching for single petaled red poppies. She was quite sympathetic, for her brother was then sleeping among the poppies behind the battlelines of France in a few-months’ old soldier’s grave. This personal contact with such a personal reaction further convinced me that this choice of a remembrance emblem for those sleeping in Flanders Fields was no accident but a logical one.
When I returned to duty at our headquarters for the evening hours the men came crowding again for poppies to wear. I had pinned one on my cloak collar, and gave out the others until the last of the twenty-five red poppies was pinned on a lapel of a Y.M.C.A. secretary of the Twenty-fifth Conference, who would soon be on his way to France to do his bit. I wore my poppy until I reached home in February, when I made some fresh ones.
The practice became widespread, aided in part by an answering poem she wrote, We Shall Keep the Faith. (Both poems are at the end of this story.)
Red lapel poppies are everywhere in early November in the UK but we have fallen out of the practice here in the US. The first year we returned from London, I forgot about poppies until it was too late. The next year I wrote an article and made sure to bring back a handful of British Legion lapel poppies. The year after that, I bought a bunch of poppies from the American Legion. I was underwhelmed. No wonder they fell out of favor here. They are quite puny.
The next year I planned ahead. I bought enamaled poppy pins from the American Legion. They are cool, with the Legion’s star as the stick cover. I’ve handed a few out and kept one for myself. For my girls though, I got the poppy bracelets from the British Leigon.
They were a big hit. Son went off with a paper poppy on his backpack. Hopefully friends and teachers will ask the kids about the poppies at school. Some did. And my efforts continue.
For your early November poppies or Memorial Day poppies in May, see The American Legion poppy purchasing page. Then compare the British Legion Poppy Appeal page. Yes, Americans are being completely out-market stragety-ed by the British. Note the Spitfire cufflinks. Stocking stuffer for husband last year. I now have one of the enamaled ones to wear each year. I usually start on Election Day. Somehow it seems fitting.
In Flanders Fields
In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
We Shall Keep The Faith
Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,
Sleep sweet — to rise anew!
We caught the torch you threw
And holding high, we keep the Faith
With All who died.
We cherish, too, the poppy red
That grows on fields where valor led;
It seems to signal to the skies
That blood of heroes never dies,
But lends a lustre to the red
Of the flower that blooms above the dead
In Flanders Fields.
And now the Torch and Poppy Red
We wear in honor of our dead.
Fear not that ye have died for naught;
We’ll teach the lesson that ye wrought
In Flanders Fields.
In Flanders Fields we fought.
The poppy pastel art at the top of this post is my son’s art project from his first year of school in the UK.
