If you’ve ever gone to a high school in Texas during homecoming, you’ve seen them; girls wearing huge, glittery, ribbon-clad tokens of school spirit called mums.

Mums, and the male equivalent, garters, have existed as a Texas homecoming staple for decades now, with girls shelling out sometimes over $600 for back-breaking, Texas-sized creations. However, the origin of these mums is, surprisingly, not Texan.

The first mums were used in Missouri colleges in 1911, the same year that the first homecoming football game was held, with a small chrysanthemum given to a young woman by her date. The first mums in Texas were seen at a Baylor University homecoming game around 20 years later in the 1930s as a small flower decorated with a few ribbons. But by the 1970s, due to the fragile and temporal nature of the flower, real chrysanthemums were swapped out with silk ones. By the 1990s mums had evolved into the gaudy, massive creations we see today.

“I love them. I think it’s a great way to show school spirit,” freshman Bennett Webster said, “I think it’s like a big fun inside joke.”

Mums, however, have often been called ostentatious and excessive, with people criticizing girls for spending hundreds of dollars on something they will only wear for one night and will be highly inconvenient to wear throughout the day.

“I don’t get why people wear them, they look super big, and I can’t imagine wearing them around for the whole day,” junior Micayla Prier said, “Walking around with them also just looks kind of silly, and I don’t get why you would spend so much money on something like that.”

The tradition is often for girls to start their freshman and sophomore years with smaller mums decorated with a few assorted ribbons and sometimes a small stuffed animal in the center. For their junior and senior years, they save the extravagance that mums are known for, adding multiple large flowers, more ribbons, bells, and lights.

“You want your mum to grow and add on to it through the years. During senior year, you have all the spotlight on you, so go big if you want to,” Webster said.

In recent years, homecoming mums have spread into neighboring states. However, they continue to stay rooted as a beloved Texas tradition.