CANDLE RETROSPECTIVE: Tis the Season ~ Christmas in a jar


Ah, Tis the Season...such a quintessential Christmas scent! It still remains a favorite and a holiday must have for me.

So this scent has been around for quite some time. It was originally called "Holiday Wreath" and sported pine green wax. Thankfully the year after they changed to "Tis the Season" and it's been that ever since...make sense as it was much more of a conceptual scent and didn't have enough pineyness to be considered a "garland" scent. The following year it became the more appropriate holiday crimson that we've come to associate with this scent.

I fell in love with this scent I first sniffed it years ago and it has remained a Christmas staple. For such a simple scent, it made a deep impression on me. To this the day, whenever I sniff TIS it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy; it conjures so many great Christmas memories from my childhood - going into the attic to take down box after box of Christmas decorations, decorating the tree with my Mom as we sang Christmas carols, opening one gift on Christmas Eve night in anticipation for all the other gifts I'd get to open the next morning, making homemade egg nog with my Grandma. You gotta love a scent that does that to you!

Now some naysayers to this scent make the usual arguments...what does this scent have to do with Christmas? Why is an apple scent considered not just a winter scent but a holiday scent? Shouldn't this be a fall/fall transitional scent?

I have my theories....

I think Slatkin chose the notes for this scent as they are the traditional colors of Christmas..

RED apples
GREEN pine
GOLD cinnamon and cider

Also apples have always been apart of the Christmas tradition for centuries. What do you think the original Christmas bulbs were? APPLES! Candles, trinkets and apples. Even before "Christmas" existed, apples were used to decorated fir trees for Winter Solstice. The Vikings would also decorate evergreen trees with gilded apples in honor of the god Odin and his son Balder (a very Jesus-like deity pre-Christianity). Wiccans still decorate with evergreen, mistletoe, holly and apples for Yule. In the Middle Ages, Christmas Eve was considered "Adam and Eve Day" with a "tree of life" paraded through town which was decorated with...you guessed it, APPLES! The tradition of using apples as Christmas decorations continues to this day; you can still find wreaths and garlands decorated with red apples. My mom had red shiny fake red apples as well as white iridescent apples that we still decorate the tree with. In China, a tradition has started where people give each other apples on Christmas Eve with the Chinese word for apple ("ping guo") sounds similar to the Chinese name for Christmas Eve ("Ping An Ye" which means "Silent Night")

So there ya go!

HAVE A MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!!!!

Comments

  1. This candle sounds amazing and I got it after hearing so many good reviews, unfortunately I hated it. I don't know if it was the 2015 version specifically but the cinnamon overpowered the other notes and I really hate cinnamon so it went straight back to the store. I might try it again this year, because I really love apple, pine and other spices like clove and nutmeg, is just the cinnamon that for some reason I don't get along with if it's too strong... :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unfortunately a lot of classic returning scents have been tweaked for whatever reason after 2015. I've heard people complain about 2015's TTS, either about the smell or the performance. I still have one from 2012 and 2014, which is a based this post on. Anyhoo, try again this year

      Delete
    2. Thanks for letting me know, fingers crossed this year they change it back... It's such a shame because I just started trying Bath and Body Works candles and I wish I tried it before but we can't get them in the UK and Ebay is crazy money so I have to save and buy only what I think I will really like. I also got cranberry woods and they changed it as well :( But I love your reviews! You are my favourite source for BBW reviews and so far almost everything you recommended and I tried I loved as well!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MY LAST POST: End of an Era

CANDLE RETROSPECTIVE: Brozeblogger's Top 20 Candles OF ALL TIME

NEWNESS UPDATE: Spring 2021 Candles