Coronavirus claims a beloved annual Christmas tradition in the Central Valley
The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has canceled a treasured part of many Central Valley residents’ annual Christmas tradition.
Hughson-based Duarte Nursery will not hold its annual poinsettia sale for the holiday season this year because of the COVID-19 outbreak. The nursery has grown, displayed and sold tens of thousands of the festive plants for the past two decades. But its president, John Duarte, said this year they’ve called off the event because of health and safety concerns. The news was announced in a Facebook post in late May.
“This is when we have to order poinsettias to begin growing them for the holiday season. So this was the decision point where had to look at all the information and come to a conclusion of what doing to do this year,” he said. “What weighed heavily was (that) my parents, who are very involved in (the poinsettias sale), have both been self-isolating for two months for health reasons.”
In fact, Duarte’s 85-year-old mother, Anita Duarte, is known as the “Poinsettia Lady” by many of their customers, who come back year after year. He said she typically works the plant sale every day during its season from Thanksgiving to Christmas and would be exposed to hundreds of people. Some 50 to 60 tour buses from area nursing homes and senior care facilities also come through the annual attraction.
Duarte said the sale would have begun around the start of the normal flu season and that, coupled with the possibility of a resurgence of the coronavirus when the weather cools again, made them come to the personal decision.
“This is a big event for my family, and especially my mom, and we really regret having to do this,” he said. “But we were not shut down by the county or Gavin Newsom or anyone else. It just wouldn’t be good for our customers, the community or our family to go forward with it this year.”
But Duarte expects to have the sale, the nursery’s largest public retail event, return in 2021. The commercial business typically sells only wholesale to farmers and ranchers.
The poinsettia sale is held in a large 60,000-square-foot greenhouse on the nursery that is decorated for the holidays and includes some 20 to 30 varieties of the plant from traditional red to white and beyond. They plant and sell some 50,000 poinsettias each year, and people like to wander through the vast space to pick out their own.
“It’s really grown. You know, no one knows what to do with their elderly aunt, so they bring them to the poinsettias. It’s like a little outing, or a wintertime pumpkin patch,” Duarte said.
