Avodah Zarah 014

Pine-cones frequently encountered on grave stones may also refer to Atys who died under a pine-tree, although we may note that the Bacchic thyrsus was itself tipped with a pine-cone… On a Risingham tombstone the pine-cone is associated with a crescent; at Carlisle Aurelia Aureliana is flanked by cones while Vitalis … buried at Halton Chesters illustrates his faith in continuing life by also having a cone carved on his grave.

in Greek mythology, a thyrsos was a staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae [fillets, ribbons] and always topped with a pine cone. Where these emblems were, there was the spirit of Dionysus also. Euripides wrote that honey dripped from the thyrsos staves that the Bacchic maenads carried. It was a sacred instrument at religious rituals and fetes.

Pagans revere the evergreen because it symbolizes eternal life to them. They further revere the "fruit" of the evergreen, the pine cone.

One of the most revered spots in the city of Rome in ancient days was the cave at the base of the Palatine Hill called the Lupercal, with the sacred fig tree hard by, under whose shadow, as the story went, a she-wolf suckled Remus and Romulus… They feasted and drank under fig-tree boughs in the Plain of Mars and, along with their mistresses, cut sprays from the sacred fig tree and sacrificed them and their milky juice to Juno of the Goat. Now the fig is purgative, and such purgatives were ceremonially used by the ancients as cathartics to expel evil influences and hence to induce good. The resemblance of the sap of the fig to milk and the fact that the sacrifice, in historical times, was made to the especial goddess of mothers, make the object of the rite fairly sure. The male fig communicates its richness to the divinity who, in turn, communicates it to the women. Moreover, we have the curious statement recorded in Varro about this festival: "They use the switch [twig] from the (male) wild fig-tree." While we are not told exactly what use was made of it, it is reasonable to suppose that the women lashed one another with it and thus transferred by magic the fertility of the fig to themselves, driving out at the same time any influences detrimental to reproduction. We have record of similar lashings with wild fig switches at the Thargelia in Athens in the curious rite of riddance by two scapegoats called pharmakoi.

Pliny wrote that Nicolaus dates, though big, were not as juicy as those preferred for a honey-like drink.

Anything that is specific in a certain place to any kind of pagan ritual may not ever be sold to the adherents of that religion in that place. Anything that is not religiously significant can be sold.