Wondering about the beginning of the legend of the bayberry candle? Hundreds of years ago, when colonial families settled in New England, they began taking care of the chores that needed to be done to set up their homes.
Most of these chores fell to the women. Women were in charge of making the candles their family would need. The average colonial home would need up to 400 candles to light the home for a year.
And, they would make the candles made from the tallow or animal fat from the animals that were slaughtered during the year. I cannot even imagine what a difficult chore this must have been. And, I’m glad I don’t need to do it today.
As you can imagine, tallow can have quite an odor after it has sat around for several months. In richer families, the women would make their candles from beeswax or bayberry wax because the smell was much nicer than tallow.
Not all families could afford this luxury all of the time. So, women saved the bayberry candles for Christmas time or other special times of the year.
Because this was such a treasured tradition, the legend of the bayberry candle was born.