What Does Christmas Smell Like? Mostly the Kitchen, Partly the Tree | Bluegrass Gifts

The Year Your House Quit Smelling Like December

It usually happens the first year the tree comes out of a box, or the first year Christmas moves from your mother's house to yours. The lights are up, the stockings are hung, and something is missing that you can't name. So what does Christmas smell like, exactly? Ask around and people answer with a place before an ingredient: Mamaw's kitchen, the tree lot, the church fellowship hall.

Christmas smells like evergreen, cinnamon and clove, peppermint, gingerbread and sugar cookies, oranges, red berries and woodsmoke, usually several at once. No single note does it alone; the smell people remember is a kitchen and a cut tree sharing one house.

The closest we have come to putting that whole house in a warmer is Matching Pajamas, our Christmas wax melt that smells like the kitchen and the tree at once. It carries cinnamon, clove, holiday berries, peppermint and evergreen, five of the notes below, and we hand-pour it in our Kentucky shop as part of our Bluegrass Belle Wax & Wick line.

What Does Christmas Smell Like? Nine Notes and Where They Live

Every note people name, in a chart worth taping inside a kitchen cabinet: where it lives, what it does, how to get it without a pot simmering from breakfast to bedtime, and which of our three Christmas melts carries it.

• Evergreen. Where it lives: the cut tree, a wreath, garland on the mantel. What it does: the base, and the one note no other holiday borrows. Without a simmer pot: a real tree, or fresh-cut greenery in a vase by the door; an artificial tree smells like the box it came in. In our melts: Matching Pajamas, Jingle Bell Jammies.
• Cinnamon. Where it lives: Christmas-morning cinnamon rolls, hot cider. What it does: warmth, and usually the first note people say out loud. Without a simmer pot: one pan of cinnamon rolls. In our melts: all three.
• Clove. Where it lives: a ham studded with cloves, mulled cider. What it does: depth and a little bite; loud alone, better in a supporting role. Without a simmer pot: push whole cloves into an orange and set it in a bowl. In our melts: all three.
• Peppermint. Where it lives: candy canes on the tree, peppermint bark. What it does: the cool edge that keeps the spice from going heavy. Without a simmer pot: honestly, hard; a bowl of peppermints scents nothing past arm's length. In our melts: Matching Pajamas, Cookies for Santa.
• Gingerbread. Where it lives: gingerbread men, a gingerbread house missing a wall by New Year's. What it does: ginger and molasses, darker than a sugar cookie. Without a simmer pot: bake one batch. In our melts: Jingle Bell Jammies, as a gingerbread latte.
• Sugar cookies and vanilla. Where it lives: cookie-baking day, the plate left out for Santa. What it does: the sense that somebody has been home all afternoon. Without a simmer pot: the oven, the one week a year it is worth baking from scratch. In our melts: Cookies for Santa, as snickerdoodle and vanilla sugar.
• Oranges. Where it lives: a clementine in the toe of the stocking. What it does: a juicy lift on top. Without a simmer pot: peel one in the room you want it in; the oil is in the peel. In our melts: none of our Christmas scents, and we would rather say so.
• Red berries. Where it lives: cranberry sauce, a popcorn-and-cranberry garland. What it does: tart sweetness that rounds off the edges of clove and pine. Without a simmer pot: cranberry sauce the day before, which is at least a pot you get to eat. In our melts: Matching Pajamas, as holiday berries.
• Woodsmoke. Where it lives: the fireplace, a neighbor's chimney on the walk to the car. What it does: the outdoor edge, and the reason your coat smells like Christmas. Without a simmer pot: light the fire if you have one. In our melts: none; we don't pour a smoke scent.

Read down it and the most Christmassy scent comes out as evergreen, not cinnamon. Cinnamon is in every pie from September on; the tree is only inside for a few weeks. Pair one tree note with one kitchen note and one bright note, and you have most of what people mean by a house that smells like Christmas.

That is how our three Christmas scents split the chart. Matching Pajamas covers the tree, the spice, the berries and the peppermint. Jingle Bell Jammies (cinnamon, clove, evergreen, gingerbread latte) trades the candy cane for gingerbread. Cookies for Santa (snickerdoodle, vanilla sugar, cinnamon, clove, peppermint) is the kitchen on baking day, with no tree in it at all.

◆ From the Workshop: Matching Pajamas goes into the wax as one fragrance oil, not five. Cinnamon, clove, holiday berries, peppermint and evergreen are all carried in a single fragrance oil made for wax melts, and we stir it into the coconut-soy blend for the tarts at ten percent by weight, the same load as every scent we pour. The five notes share that ten percent rather than each getting a load of its own, so the tart smells like one room instead of five jars, with peppermint as a cool thread rather than the lead. Want more of one note? Add a second scent to the dish, not more of the first.

Why One Whiff of Clove Puts You Back at Your Grandmother's Table

Smell takes a shorter road to memory than sight or sound. The nerves that carry it run almost straight into the parts of the brain that handle emotion and memory, which is why a smell can hand you back a whole room before you can name it. You don't remember cinnamon. You remember the kitchen it was in and who was at the stove.

Christmas smells hit harder because you only meet them once a year, on the best days of it. Nobody has a memory of evergreen on a Tuesday in March. A smell that shows up for one season gets filed under that season, which is how a candy cane comes to smell like one particular living room.

There is a catch, and it explains the house that quit smelling like December. Your nose stops reporting a smell it lives with, which is why somebody else's house always smells more like Christmas than yours: you walked into theirs out of the cold, with a fresh nose. Half the time your house smells fine. You have just been standing in it all day.

How to Build a Christmas Smell Like the One You Remember

The houses people remember were never scented evenly: the tree in one room, the oven in another, the cold coming in the front door. Build it the same way.

• Start at the door. Christmas smell gets noticed coming in, so the warmer goes in the room people enter first.
• One room, one note. The tree note in the front room, the kitchen note in the kitchen. Walking from one into the other is what reads as a whole house.
• Leave the bedrooms out. A scent everywhere is a scent nowhere.
• Size it to the room. A piece or two of a tart suits most rooms. For a big open front room the squeeze pouch helps: it has a stronger throw, and you squeeze a little more straight into the dish.
• On before the doorbell. Let the room fill before company comes, and switch the warmer off when you leave the room or go to bed.
• Test with a fresh nose. Step out on the porch long enough to feel the cold, then come back in. What you smell in that first breath is what your guests smell.

For two scents in one dish, pair one complex scent with one simple one; we wrote a whole post on how to combine wax melt scents without making your house smell weird. Our own pick for the whole house: Matching Pajamas in the front room from the day the tree goes up, and Cookies for Santa in the kitchen on baking day.

Four Scents Going at Once Is Not Four Times the Christmas

The myth: if one scent makes a house smell like Christmas, a simmer pot, a jar candle, a plug-in and a warmer all going at once will make it smell like Christmas morning. It doesn't. Four fragrances trip over each other and the house smells like the seasonal aisle of a big store. The houses you remember smelled strongest at the oven, faintest at the tree and freshest at the door, and that unevenness is the whole trick.

And if there is a real tree in the corner, a fire going and cookies in the oven, you don't need us this week. A warmer earns its place in the house missing one of those: the artificial tree, the apartment with no fireplace, the year nobody has time to bake.

We are a small Kentucky shop with 5,000+ customer reviews, and we hand-pour all 30 of our scents in the same shop where we carve our signs. Each one comes as a 9 oz bag of shaped tarts (boots and hats, flowers, squares, hearts or bears) or an 8 oz squeeze pouch, both $16.99 with free U.S. shipping. Any two or more melts or signs earn up to 20% off at checkout, so pick one tree scent and one kitchen scent from our wax melts collection and let the two rooms work together. Use them only in a warmer made for wax melts, never leave a warmer on unattended, and keep them away from children and pets; they look a lot like candy, and they are not food.

Buying for a whole office? Our post on Christmas gifts for office staff when everybody has to like the same thing walks through doing it in a batch.

So if your front room has gone quiet since the real tree went to the curb, put a piece of Matching Pajamas Christmas wax melts in the warmer nearest the door, go get the mail, and come back in. You will know what Christmas smells like before you get your coat off.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Christmas smell like?

Christmas smells like evergreen from the tree, cinnamon and clove from the kitchen, peppermint from candy canes, gingerbread and sugar cookies from the oven, oranges, red berries and a little woodsmoke, usually several at once. No single note carries it alone. The tree gives the December base, the spice and baking give the warmth, and peppermint or orange adds the bright edge.

What is the most Christmassy scent?

If you have to pick one, evergreen is the most Christmassy scent, because a cut tree in the house is the one smell that belongs to December and nothing else. Cinnamon is a close second, but it shows up with the first apple pie in fall. Peppermint is a strong third. A scent that layers evergreen with cinnamon, clove and peppermint, like our Matching Pajamas, covers all three at once.

Should I get Matching Pajamas as tarts or the squeeze pouch?

Get the 9 oz bag of tarts if you like breaking off a piece at a time or want a natural, plant-based melt, and get the 8 oz squeeze pouch if you want a stronger throw and no crumbs. The tarts are a coconut-soy wax blend and fragrance oil, poured as boots and hats, flowers, squares, hearts or bears. The pouch is the same wax and fragrance oil with mineral oil added, soft wax you squeeze straight into the dish; it is not a natural product, and its color varies by batch while the scent holds. Both are $16.99 with free U.S. shipping.