Lore of the Bayberry Candle
A Bayberry Candle burned to the socket brings Luck to the household,
Food to the larder and Gold to the pocket.
The history and legend of the Bayberry Candle is dominantly American, but with Celtic roots.
One ALWAYS burns a bayberry candle on Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
In true Celtic tradition, the candle needs to continue burning from one day into the next, so as to bring the good luck forward. This is also why we eat ham on New Year’s rather than fowl – because a bird scratches backwards while the pig always roots forward!
Why then call it an American tradition?
When the first settlers arrived on our shores, every moment was one of survival. Everything was in short supply including candles.
In late fall, as the animals were slaughtered, women (yes, sex divided responsibilities in colonial America) would begin making candles for the following year. The average home would require approximately 200 - 400 candles to illuminate the home for a year. Tallow, or animal fat, was collected throughout the year, but slaughter always brought more fat to the home. As candle making was grueling and smelly work, the bulk of it was done in a single day.
Tallow can be quite foul after a few weeks. Imagine how much worse it must be after several months! In more affluent homes, the women would make candles from beeswax or bayberry wax, as the aroma was far sweeter than anything an animal would leave behind.
Enter the Bayberry
The “Bayberry” was not unknown to the Colonists — although the variety they knew was called “Sweet Gale, and was amongst other things, the badge of the Campbells. Sweet Gale was used for many things including candle making.
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Sweet Gale
On arrival on the Eastern Shore of North America, the colonists quickly discovered the Bayberry plant growing abundantly on those same shores. The Bayberry, whose wax, also known as "bayberry tallow" or "myrtle wax," was the rarest and most prized of all candle waxes
Botanical: Myrica cerifera (LINN.)
Family: N.O. Myricaceae
Synonyms -- Wax Myrtle. Myrica. Candle Berry. Arbre à suif.
Myricae Cortex. Tallow Shrub. Wachsgagle.
Parts Used -- The dried bark of the root. The wax.
Habitat -- Eastern North America.
Description — The only species of a useful family that is regarded as
official, Myrica cerifera grows in thickets near swamps and marshes in the
sand-belt near the Atlantic coast and on the shores of Lake Erie.
Its height is from 3 to 8 feet, its leaves lanceolate, shining or
resinous, dotted on both sides, its flowers unisexual without calyx or
corolla, and its fruit small groups of globular berries, having numerous
black grains crusted with greenish-white wax. These are persistent for two
or three years. The leaves are very fragrant when rubbed.
Note: BAYBERRY is also a synonym for a different and unrelated plant, the
Wild Cinnamon or Pimenta acris of the West Indies and South America,
which yields Bay Rum and oil of Bayberry.
Bayberry
Until Colonial times, most candles were made of tallow, rendered animal fat. It burned brightly but was smelly, smoky and could turn rancid. Beeswax, available in Europe from the Middle Ages on, was too costly for all except the rich.
It did not take long for the early colonists to discover that the abundant bayberry bush had berries that would give off a waxy residue when boiled. They learned to collect and save this bayberry wax that would rise to the surface of the water. Successful American experiments to recover the wax from bayberries yielded fragrant, smokeless, clean candles that were light-years ahead of the messier animal-fat variety. The bayberry tapers burned longer and cleaner than the tallow version.
Unfortunately, it takes a lot of bayberries to make enough wax to make a single taper.
Although bayberries grew everywhere in New England and in the South, it takes nearly 18 pounds of the berries to get about 2 pounds of wax. Candles made from this labor-intensive wax production were sought after. Some communities passed laws to protect the bayberry crop from early harvest. The result was a high value, luxury item. To have a bayberry candle was a luxury to be saved and relished. As candle-making was an annual autumn activity, bayberry candles were set aside for the winter holidays.
Ritual developed around the bayberry candles and became a Christmas Eve or New
Year's Eve tradition. On the night before Christmas or on New Year's Eve, a
bayberry candle was burned -- and it had to be timed to stay alight until after
midnight -- to bring a year of prosperity and good fortune to the household. You
could not extinguish the candle; it had to be allowed to burn out on its own. If
the candle burned down to the socket, abundance would bless everyone
participating in the ritual.
Because pure bayberry wax tends to be brittle, traditional candles were, so candle-makers mixed the wax with beeswax to help them hold their shape and not fracture.
A genuine bayberry candle won't give off a powerful perfume -- those are artificially perfumed candles -- but will emit its fragrance most noticeably when it goes out or is snuffed out.
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