Bayberry ... An Original Christmas Symbol

First Sunday of Advent:

    "Wife make thine owne candle,
    Spare pennie to handle.
    Provide for thy tallow, ere frost cometh in,
    And make thine owne candle, ere winter begin."

                                                        . . . . . Thomas Tusser

From Eric Sloane's The Seasons of America's Past:

Bayberry candles were made during late autumn, when the berries were ripest. The bayberries were thrown into a pot of boiling water, and their fat rose to the top and became a superior candle wax. Bayberry candles burned slowly; they didn't bend or melt during summer heat, and yielded a fine incense, particularly when the candle was snuffed. So prized were bayberry candles that the gathering of berries before autumn in America once brought a fifteen-shilling fine.

The silver-gray berries of scented bayberry, known in England as the "tallow shrub," were for many years sent overseas as Christmas souvenirs from the New World. In the 1700's, the bayberry was more Christmasy than holly (which represents the thorns and blood of the crucifixion rather than the birth of Christ). The burning of a bayberry candle at Christmas was as traditional in America as the burning of a Yule Log in England. "A bayberry candle burned to the socket," an old verse goes, "brings luck to the house and gold to the pocket." Children seldom went to bed on Christmas night without the magic charm of a bayberry candle, and the perfume of the snuffed bayberry candle was part of that magic night.