For the record: I have never liked cut flowers as a concept, and even find flower vase the second most useless household item that one can own. But as to your snark, I actually DO refer to the high-pollen times as plant-orgy season. Not all the time, but often enough.
:-)
Human sacrifice has a long history. Though it was, as far as I'm aware, a rare and drastic thing to do. For example there were a few instances in classical Roman history when human slaves were sacrificed. This was done in very dire situations, think pandemic or important battle, and often in earlier Roman periods. It was also actually quite common in Aztec and Mayan, though in differing degrees. They didn't however use volcanoes
Also in these classical times human slavery was much more wide spread and accepted. It was a very different situation to modern and colonial slavery. Some examples of it being wide spread being helots in ancient Greece, and the slave economy of Rome. The influx of slaves in the gallic wars lead to the political upheaval that let Cesar come to power, with "cheap" labor taking work from Roman citizens.
To summarize, having flowers in a vase is completely normal, and likening it to slavery or human sacrifice is dumb. Also history is interesting!
Why?
> bizarre and grotesque custom
And comparing it to slavery?