Kesubos 17a - Dancing with a Haddas

The gemara says that R' Yehuda Bar Ilai would take a haddas in his hand and dance with it in front of a kallah and say "kallah na'ah v'chasuda". The meforshim don't explain what exactly was the symbolism of the haddas. It seems to me, that since we follow Beis Hillel and we take the liberty to say "kalla na'ah v'chasuda" regardless of whether she is in fact "na'ah" and "chasuda", we go out of our way to explain what we mean to avoid sheker (to deal with the concern of Beis Shamai). Rashi explains that "chasuda" means that a strand of kindness was drawn over her. Rashi is clearly trying to hint at the gemara in megillah which says that Esther was called Haddasah since she was actually not so attractive, rather green like a haddas, yet achashveirosh was interested in her because a "chut shel chesed" was drawn over her. Perhaps R' Yehuda Bar Ilai made a point of dancing with the haddas to indicate that when we claim the kallah is "chasuda" it is not a lie, rather we mean to indicate that just as esther was called haddasah because she was green like a haddas, but a chut shel chessed was drawn over her, so too this kallah a chut shel chessed was drawn over her.

Based on this, the concern of R' Zeirah, that the "sabba" is embarrassing us meant to say that we usually follow Beis Hillel without concern for the exaggeration, yet he is embarrassing us by being machmir to fulfill Beis Shamai as well and indicate that "chasuda" is not to be taken literally. We can now also understand why the Rosh records this custom of dancing with a haddas, which would seemingly not be important - but he is coming to show that some amoraim tried to be machmir for the concern of Beis Shamai, not to say something which is sheker.