BLAST FROM THE PAST: Holiday Pomander (2009)

Products: candle
Area used in: living room
Time Period: December - New Years

Description: citrus fruits, cloves, bay rum, leafy balsam, and musk

Trivia: a "pomander" is a citrus fruit (usually some kind of orange) studded with clove; orange clove is a blend associated with Christmastime


So this is a scent that shortly before my time as a BBWer and only heard about in recent years. I don't know how it happened but I ran across while doing a Google search on another scent. It was a promotion on QVC from during the Slatkin era..and there it was...

The notes sounded so enticing and intriguing that I had to find it. After searching for years on the black market, I finally found one recently priced and immediately bought it; it smelled as amazing as I thought it would. Then about a year or so again perhaps, I was able to score another one reasonably priced. As you may remember, there was a Pomander candle out in stores now which I was hoping would be a repackage of HP but alas it was not. So I decided to throw caution to the wind, a have a pure YOLO moment and light up one of my HPs (the other is a permanent SNIFF ONLY candle) for Christmas time and I'm soooo glad I did cuz it is amazeballs.

HP is pure unadulterated Christmas in a jar - more so than Tis the Season, more so than Evergreen, Winter, Chestnut & Clove, Spice etc. Amongst true candle connoisseurs and ol school Slatkineers, Winter Garland is the ultimate rare hard to find classic Christmas in a jar scent..and for aawhile I agreed..that is until I lit up HP. I will now say something truly scandalous; in my humble opinion, HP smells BETTER than Winter Garland!

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So as you can imagine just based on the name, main things you smell in HP is orange and clove. You get the rind/peel/zest of the orange and clementine and maybe a little lemon as well. That rich citrus oil smell is spiced with intense earthy clove as well bay rum... Bay rum is a distilled cologne made from rum infused with citrus rinds, cinnamon, clove and pimento/Jamaican pepper. And NO, before you say anything, this does NOT smell cologney; the bay rum just adds a sweetness, pungentness and spiciness to the blend. Lastly theres a resinous astringent pine/balsam note that hits your nose last and gives the scent a quintessential alpine/winter feel. The blend as a whole just has a very classic,  traditional, old fashioned Victorian/Dickensian Christmas with Christmas punch and figgy puddings and mincemeat pies and trees with candles and bayberry boughs and stockings by the fireplace roasting chestnuts. This is a candle that makes you wanna pour yourself a glass of mulled wine, wrap up in a blanket and watch A Christmas Carol.

I have only burned 3x so have and each time was a flawless burn with a gorgeous pool with the highest flames I've seen in awhile. And because this is from the good ol days when candles had a 40-45 burn time, I can light this up with reckless abandon during the holiday season. If I can find another one of these badbois, I am definitely buying it no questions asked.