A desire to understand my own traditions sparked my story on Day of the Dead's iconic flower

I walked into Flowers with Love on 26th Street in Little Village on a rainy October weekday, not knowing what to expect.

With Day of the Dead weeks away, I wanted to talk to the owner of the flower shop about its sales of cempasuchil — or Mexican marigold — in the lead-up to the now popular celebrations at the beginning of November.

I knew the holiday had gone mainstream, but I was surprised when Anahy Olivera told me her shop expected to sell at least $5,000 worth of the flower that month. I'm no flower expert, but that seemed substantial. I wondered if other flower shops were also seeing high sales, and how that compared to previous years.

That's how the eventual story began to take shape. But the idea to write about the flower was born out of my own curiosity about what's behind some of the holiday traditions passed down to me by Mexican family.

I first learned about cempasuchil's mythical properties as a child. My grandmother would prepare our Dia de Muertos altar in late October. There'd be pan de muerto, candles, drinks and snacks arranged on a living room table. She'd display photographs of relatives long-buried in Mexico.

It was her, and my mother, who taught me about the flower's role in the holiday — that it helped guide our ancestors back home from the depths of the underworld. The food on the altar was off limits to us. It was for the spirits, famished from their long journey.

Now I have my own altar at home. Though I don't really believe the spirits of departed loved ones will go hungry, I still don't touch the food I lay out. I spread out photographs as my grandmother would. Cempasuchil features prominently on the ofrenda.

But my version isn't exactly like my grandmother's. I include items that once belonged to beloved pets. While not "officially" part of the holiday, that practice has become popular among newer generations in recent years. And that's OK because that's what happens when old beliefs are seen through new eyes. Traditions survive by being flexible. The altar my descendants arrange, if they choose to, will reflect their own visions.

As I began to plan my altar this year I thought about the stories my family told me.

"Who taught them?" I asked myself. "And where did those stories all begin?" I decided to focus on the flower because though it's my favorite symbol of the holiday, I was ignorant about its history.

I spoke with Cesareo Moreno of the National Museum of Mexican Art and Veronica Moraga of the University of Chicago to find the nexus between the marigold and the holiday.

From those conversations I learned that the modern celebrations are a mishmash of Aztec and Catholic traditions. I learned that the altars can differ from region to region in Mexico and that the holiday wasn't always widely celebrated in the country.

Spencer Campbell, plant clinic manager at the Morton Arboretum, revealed the plant's natural traits, explaining that pre-Columbian people recognized its usefulness and cultivated it for centuries.

One aspect about the flower that I didn't learn from my family was the story of its origin in Aztec legend. Mexico's secretary of agriculture and rural development chronicles the tragic love story of Xochitl and Huitzilin that was said to have birthed the flower.

It's a story I might now pass on, too.

Another detail that piqued my interest was that Puebla, the state where my family is from, is one of the top producers of cempasuchil in Mexico.

I'll seek out those growing fields on my next visit, now with a deeper understanding of the flower's connection to the land, its people and their traditions, which live on, even thousands of miles away on the strange shores of Lake Michigan.