The Christmas stamp issued by Finland in 1986 depicts four elves playing with a garland.
The garland is tied with red ribbon and the greenery has red baubles tied to it
I remember our landlady, 40 years ago, used to have branches of Myrtle on her sideboard over the Christmas period and no other decorations. One evening I took the children for a walk to look at the Christmas displays in the shop windows, there was only one! I imagine we ended up at the Loukoumada shop.
Apart from the Myrtle branches there also used to be branches with the small firikia apple impaled on the top for sale.
On Saturday we went to the street market, ostensibly to buy pears and spinach, but on my part to take photos and was pleased to see that Myrtle branches and the apple topped branches were on sale. Here the stall holder had combined them both and he admitted that the red apples were painted. I have been unable to find any reference on the Internet to this tradition of Myrtle and the firikia topped branches.
It is amazing just how much useful stuff, for photographic purposes, we have around the house.We don’t have an elf dressed in red clothes but I did find another imp, this one is tiny and is of a Cornish Knocker, I didn’t know they were called Knockers until today.The imp is made of Cornish tin and imprinted on the back is
SOUTH CROFTY
TIN
CORNWALL
There is no shortage of references to Myrtle in THE MEDITERRANEAN GARDEN
Go to
http://www.mediterraneangardensociety.org/index-m.htmland decide which one or ones to read