Bayberry candles have been holiday favorites for many years.
Bayberry wax is also known as "bayberry tallow" or "myrtle wax."  
It is the rarest and most prized of all candle waxes. There are two
types of Bayberry shrubs, the Northern Bayberry (Myrica
Pensylvanica) and Southern Bayberry (Myrica cerifera), both
which produce the berries.  The most commonly found wax is
from the Northern Bayberry that grows in thickets near swamps
and marshes along the Atlantic coast and shores of Lake Erie.

Bayberry wax comes from the berries of the bayberry shrub.  The
berries have a waxy coating on their skin and when  boiled, the
wax separates and can be collected. It takes about 15 pounds of
bayberries to make one pound of wax. The berries are boiled and
the wax floats on top of the water. The wax itself is a soft olive
green with a wonderful green hay aroma.

Candles Of The Earth bayberry candles are either 100% bayberry
wax or for a lower cost alternative, we also make bayberry
candles from a mixture of 100% bayberry wax and 100% beeswax.  
Either way, you are getting the real thing - not a "bayberry scent"
or "bayberry fragrance" candle.  It makes all the difference.

Bayberry candles are especially popular around the holidays and
burning a bayberry candle on either Christmas Eve or New Year's
Eve all the way to the end guarantees good luck the next year.  As
the saying goes: "A bayberry candle burned to the socket brings
food to the larder and gold to the pocket."

Early American colonists used the wax from bayberries to make
candles. In the novel "The Swiss Family Robinson" by Johann
David Wyss, the shipwrecked family made candles using the wax
from wild bayberries.

The candle and poem are traditionally given as a Christmas or
New Year's gift.  In keeping with tradition, Candles Of The Earth
includes with each bayberry or bayberry-beeswax candle the
following poem:

This bayberry candle is a gift from a friend,
on Christmas Eve burn it down to the end.
A bayberry candle burned down to the socket,
brings food to the larder and gold to the pocket.
Bayberry Candle Facts