Winter and holiday candles

The winter holidays of 2020 are all about continuing to fake it until we make it, so let’s fake the smell of trees and parties and joy because hoo boy do we need it. You’re not traveling to visit family during a pandemic, are you? I know; you’re too smart and kind for that selfish bullshit, so let me tell you about my favorite winter candles.

First things first: if you want a candle that smells like a Christmas tree, you can’t beat Trader Joe’s Cedar Balsam candle. It comes in a tin with a lid, and it’s $3.99. We buy one every year and I light it every night and it lasts us exactly the month of December. There are other, fancier versions of this scent and I’m not going to judge you for going for a more posh version, especially if you’re giving it as a gift, but I truly think the TJ’s one smells better than all the rest. They also do a Cranberry Pine, and they look identical, so be sure you’re buying the Cedar Balsam. I cannot vouch for Cranberry Pine.

If you want more candle than this, Redwood + Co.’s Tree Farm candle comes in four sizes: a 4 oz tin, 8 oz plastic jar, 10.5 oz glass, and an 18 oz. 3-wick version. This one smells very good, nearly identical to the Trader Joe’s candle, perhaps a bit more eucalyptus? It’s worth adding that I’ve found their candles’ throw isn’t always as strong, but their room sprays have serious longevity. One wonderful thing this company does is offer a $10 sampler of all their candles in tealight form. Why doesn’t everyone do this?! I ordered their Fall & Holiday Sample pack in October and I’m so glad I did this instead of basing my decisions on just the written descriptions online. You might be like, “I like cinnamon and citrus! I like bourbon and pecan! Ok, sold!” but not until you smell it do you realize it reminds you of a terrible former co-worker or your ex’s mom’s house.

Another good holiday candle by Redwood + Co. is Christmas Cheer. Maybe it’s because I haven’t been to a party since February (and even then they were an elementary school auction with cocktails and an afternoon gathering for my 90-year-old great-aunt’s birthday), but this candle actually smells like a Christmas party to me. It has a heart of plum, gin, and red currant along with the usual holiday juniper/balsam/cedar, but I swear to god the last thing I get is a hit of perfume and coats being piled on a bed. It smells like greeting your friends at the door and smelling their freshly-applied lipstick as they kiss you on the cheek. Am I now huffing this candle at my desk with my eyes closed and remembering Christmas house parties past, where strangers had sex in the bathroom and someone needed stitches and people stayed until 4 am having drunken shouty fights about Steely Dan in our stairwell but then it had snowed so much that no one could get an Uber home? It’s like my own version of A Christmas Carol over here! Don’t worry: this candle smells more like the beginning of those evenings than the endings.

Note: Redwood + Co. is a small business having a sale from 11/20-11/30 and everything on their site is 25% off with code 2020BFCM. Also probably worth repeating that I don’t have any affiliate links or dogs in this fight, I’m just sharing the good candle news.

If you’re after less of a Christmas candle and into more of a clean midnight moon-on-the-breast- of-the-newfallen-snow vibe, Voluspa White Cypress is what the White Witch from Narnia’s apartment would smell like if she gave up witchcraft and started influencing. So many candles claim to smell like snow, and that’s not a bullshit claim (I’m looking at you, £100 candle that claims to smell like air), because snow has an actual smell! The way the air smells right before it snows is a real and knowable thing! But it’s so hard to capture. This is more like you’re watching it snow from the balcony of an immaculate home with white fur throws on white sofas. It says its key notes are “White Cypress Freshly Snapped and Trimmed” because you know Empress Jadis isn’t playing. Snap and trim faster, motherfuckers!! As of this posting, the small jar size is on sale for $13.50 at Sephora. It will make January and February feel indulgent instead of severe.

Another candle that is very winter to me is K. Hall Designs Milk. I’m forever in pursuit of the perfect milk scent – not too sweet, not too rich, not too medicinal. The perfect milk scent was actually captured once, by The Body Shop, in a limited range of bath products for Christmas 2000, and if I’d known it was a destined to be temporary holiday line I would have bought ten of everything. The K. Hall Designs Milk comes the closest to that scent. This is a simple scent but incredibly clean, mellow, and calm. It smells like your skin after getting out of a bubble bath and getting into fresh sheets. It says it’s a blend of coconut, vanilla, and cream and I guess I get all of those, but very faintly. I smelled it for the first time years ago in a Brooklyn boutique that was all blond wood and $12 handmade cards and fell in love immediately. I would not normally buy something claiming to be coconut or vanilla, but the way they’ve combined them here is very subtle and peaceful. This smells like going to bed without worries. The best part is if you like this scent, it comes in a candle, diffuser, oil, bath bomb, body lotion, hand cream, room spray, and bath soak. I also own it in a perfume. I prefer non-perfumey perfumes that just smell like clean or warm skin, and this does the trick. It’s for cold weather only, a quiet, January candle. Don’t ask me to explain; these are just the rules.

The Friday night before the election I did something I’ve actually never done before, which was to have many drinks and then buy candles online, candles that I’d never smelled before. This is how you act out during a pandemic in your 40s. A week later a giant box from Otherland showed up and I felt a level of shame that I last felt in my 20s when I had to get a ride back to the bar on Sunday afternoon to retrieve my car from the night before. I’ve ordered blind from Otherland once a few years ago, and was not impressed and returned the candle (Sun Suede). At least now they offer scented coasters as a sampler, but I’m still not a fan of anything from their core collection: the design is trendy but they’re all too perfumey. I’ve been tempted by that tennis ball one on so many Instagram ads but I held strong. But then my friend Jess kept telling me how great Tapestry and Cardamom Milk smelled — I am not usually a fan of any food-based scent, but Jess got me by telling me that Cardamom Milk smelled like a baby’s head. Our exact text exchange once I received mine:

Me: Ok Cardamom Milk smells like a baby! Also a Cabbage Patch Kid? In a good way

Jess: Yes! Like halfway between real baby and fake baby

Otherland needs to delete all the copy on its website and replace it with “halfway between real baby and fake baby.” Is it sweeter than I would normally go? Yes, absolutely. Do I regret it? Not at all! Do you even remember how good Cabbage Patch Kids’ heads smelled?!

The other Otherland candle I ordered, it turns out, was NOT Tapestry, but Mountain Lace, and the minute I saw that its first note was “Elderflower Fizz” I was like yep, of course drunk me bought this. I love elderflower and wish it was more of a standard flavor option here in the US like it is in Europe. In pre-COVID times I wasted so much money trying every elderflower soda Cost Plus World Market ever carried. Once I even tried to ship myself a case of Kopparberg Elderflower and Lime Cider from the UK. Maybe drunk me thought I’d drink this candle? It’s very sweet, and mostly fruity. There’s more apple and pear than elderflower, and the scent reminds me of Tinkerbell play makeup from my childhood. It’s a vanity table candle, a magazine in the bath candle. Would I have spent $36 dollars on this if I’d smelled it sober in a shop? Probably not, but that’s not going to stop me from burning it all the way down.

Last week I received another surprise candle package, only this time it had nothing to do with election stress or alcohol: my friend Kevin saw an Anthony Hopkins candle featured on Kate Beckinsale’s Instagram page and just impulsively ordered one for me. Go read that sentence again, it’s so fun. Yes, that Anthony Hopkins! Some? All? It’s unclear what percentage of the proceeds of Anthony Hopkins’s candles go to No Kid Hungry, which is obviously great. So this was a very huge gamble Kevin took, picking out a scent for someone else as a surprise, and while I would never recommend you do this, it totally paid off! The scent he chose, Amber Noir, smells like… it smells like the embodiment of my teenage dreams of adulthood. It smells the way teenage me imagined the lives of people who wore dark paisley rayon and berets and lived in loft apartments and had complicated love affairs with people named Devon or Blake. It smells like if “Never Tear Us Apart” was a candle. I would bet money this is what Janet Jackson smelled like for the entirety of her janet. tour. It’s a big gold 90s earring of a candle. It is A LOT and I’m into it.

So there you go: candles that smell like a tree, a party, the White Witch’s condo, bedtime, children’s makeup, real and fake babies, cocktails, and Denise Huxtable’s best outfits. Stay home and smell them.