Yesterday I solemnly put away the Halloween decor at the shop. I’m never quite prepared enough to say goodbye to spooky season.It’s definitely my favorite time of year…tis the season of the witch, after all, lol! Despite my internal resistance, I immediately set my mind in holiday mode and began the process of resetting the shop with all the festive holiday trimmings. Even though it seems all too soon, like we’re in a weird in-between moment - no doubt exaggerated by the collective bated breath of this week’s election results - it’s the curse of the retail world to forcibly jump directly into the next season without a moment to waste.
That’s not to say that I’m not excited to embrace the joyous season ahead - I am always excited to birth a new collection into the world! This season we take a step back in time to enjoy the splendor and opulence of a Victorian Christmas, with its themes of family, charity, goodwill, peace and happiness. This era is known for establishing many of the holiday traditions that we continue to embody in our modern lives. Prior to the publication of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, in 1843, and subsequently Tchaikovsky’s first orchestral ballet performance of The Nutcracker in 1891, Christmas celebrations were rather minimal and almost nonexistent, particularly for the common folk with limited means. From decorated Christmas trees in the home, first popularized by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1848, to the very first Christmas card in 1843, caroling, and wrapped presents under the tree in the 1870’s, all of our most beloved holiday traditions exploded onto the holiday scene and rapidly spread around the world in a joyous embrace. It was the golden age of celebrations to be sure. Now, of course, I am not about to let you forget that ALL of these traditions have their roots in pre-Christian pagan customs, inlcuding ancient Celtic Winter Solstice celebrations, Roman Saturnalia, Germanic Yule, and other pagan rituals. From gift-giving during Saturnalia, wassailing as a precursor to caroling in the English Middle Ages, the Druid priests of the ancient Celts decorating their temples with evergreens, the highly sacred mistletoe (widely revered from the Romans and Celts to the Druids and the Norse), and many more traditions trace back to ancient pagan roots. Our Christmas traditions are steeped in history and far pre-date the Christ in Christmas. But the Victorian era is undoubtedly when ALL of these separate cultural traditions were conveniently adopted as a whole, adding luxurious revelery to the Christmas season.
Our holiday 2024 collection celebrates the wonders and joys of the old-fashioned, slow and intentional heart and spirit of the vintage Victorian Christmas. Let’s check it out!
The Nutcracker Suite artisan botanical soap
“There had just been a big battles between the dolls and mice. The reason I was so scared was that the mice were going to capture poor Nutcracker, who was in command of the dolls. So I threw my shoe at the mice, and after that I don’t know what happened.”
-The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, E.T.A. Hoffman
Hoffman's book, published in 1816, and reimagined as a fairy tale ballet composition in 1892 by Tchaikovsky, tells the story of Clara, who is given a nutcracker for Christmas. She falls asleep and dreams it has come to life. After a battle with the Mouse King, Clara and her Nutcracker Prince travel through a snowy forest to the magical Kingdom of Sweets where they meet the lovely Sugar Plum Fairy. This iconic story has won the hearts of children for generations!
Our Nutcracker Suite bar brings all the vintage holiday vibes with its festive palette, colorful swirls and all the bling on top! Fans of our Frosted Fir blend from past years will find this new design aesthetic uplifting and joyful! Fresh accords of fir needle and spruce with punchy notes of eucalyptus and spearmint. A holiday must-have!
For an extra festive touch, our Nutcracker Suite bars are packaged in a holiday-themed organza bag and adorned with a wooden nutcracker ornament.
Sugar Plum Fairy wax melt assortment
One by one, the Sugar Plum Fairy brought in all the delights of the land: hot chocolate from Spain, coffee from Arabia, Chinese tea, the candy canes, Marzipan and her shepherd girls, the little polichinelles like dolls, Dewdrop and her garlands of flowers.
-The Nutcracker movie, 1993
Our Sugar Plum Fairy collection features classic holiday scents that will appeal to all ages. From festive Christmas tree faves to nostalgic wassail and comforting sweet treats, this blend is sure to bring visions of sugar plums and memories of holidays at Grandma's house.
O Tannenbaum artisan botanical soap
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
How steadfast are your branches!
Your boughs are green in summer’s clime
And through the snows of wintertime.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
How steadfast are your branches!
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
What happiness befalls me when oft
at joyous Christmas-time
Your form inspires my song and rhyme.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
What happiness befalls me
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your boughs can teach a lesson
That constant faith and hope sublime
Lend strength and comfort through all time.
O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree,
Your boughs can teach a lesson.
-O Christmas Tree, translated from the German O Tannenbaum by Ernst Anschütz 1824
Our O Tannenbaum bar is an ode to the iconic Christmas Tree. The Nutcracker story is set in Nuremberg, Germany on Christmas Eve in the 1820s, a family and their friends gather in the parlor to decorate the Christmas tree in preparation for the party. As the clock strikes midnight, the Christmas tree grows to dizzying heights and the wooden nutcracker toy given to the children by their toy-maker uncle grows to life size proportions, as a battle wages between an army of mice and gingerbread soldiers!
O Tannenbaum presents a colorful topping of festive Christmas tree lights (made from soap, of course!) and a special swirl on the face of the bar that reveals a Christmas tree! A glorious and joyful bar to treasure and gift to your loved ones! Now you can enjoy this brilliant work of #utilitarianart all throughout the holiday season! Scented in a holiday classic - pine and fir with a touch of clove and red currant.
Merry Christmas!
Featured Product of the Month - Happy Holidays boxed artisan botanical soap sets
Just in time for holiday gifting, we're offering these adorable gift sets of 4 bars of our special holiday edition soaps. Each bar echoes the design and scent of our standard bars, but in a more compact shape that tucks perfectly into our gift boxes. These bars are then lovingly gift wrapped in festive holiday wrap, and tucked inside a cute wooden box and hand tied with ribbon. A sisal soap saver bag is included as an added bonus! You pick the soap scents to fully customize the gift box! It's the perfect grab-and-go hostess gift or last-minute stocking stuffer for the artisan botanical soap lover. Very limited quantities!
We introduced these boxed sets last year at the Pittsboro Holly Days tree lighting festival, our family's favorite annual holiday event. We've made them even more special this year by gift-wrapping each bar!
Oh and yes, you will find Solstice at this year's Holly Days on Sunday, November 24th. We wouldn't miss it for anything!
Of course, our holiday collection would not be complete without our seasonal favorites, Candy Cane Twist artisan botanical soap, allll the holiday room sprays, our Merry & Bright and Candy Cane Kiss bath salt blends, cheerily packaged in plastic light bulbs, Jingle Jangle Santa gnome bath bombs, and our generously sized Deck the Halls ornament bath bombs. Customers also come back year after year for our scented wax sachets to hang from the tree! Our holiday sachets are scented in the same delightful aromas you'll find in our wax melts. We have a few more holiday themed products we'll be releasing in the coming weeks - body butter, hand and heel rescue cream, and more surprises yet to be announced! Stay tuned on the socials to be the first to know!
The Reason for the Season
Spoiler alert....I don't consider myself a Christian. Surprise, right? LOL! However, a vast many of our very best customers are strong of faith and good people to the core of their generous, everloving souls. Not one of these devout Christians I know would ever force their beliefs on another. Keeping the Christ in Christmas means letting others keep the Christ out of theirs. It's about choosing love over control. Sharing your love for Jesus ought to be evident through the kindness of your actions, your loving empathy for others, and how you navigate the world (and seeing as it's election day, how you vote!). Everyone is entitled to feeling the joy of the season in their own personal way, befitting of their own personal beliefs. For the record, I have a healthy personal relationship with Jesus who offers me guidance during Reiki blessings... oftentimes his hands are over mine as the energy flows through me. So yeah, Jesus matters to me, too, in a deeply spiritual way.
Our most popular holiday season products are those that reference the Christ in Christmas! Our Gifts of the Magi artisan botanical soap, scented in frankincense and myrrh, literally flies off the shelf every holiday season. We all know the story of the Three Wise Men, also known as the Magi, journeying by the stars to the birth site of the Christ child, bringing their rare and valuable gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The ancient church understood that the three types of gifts clearly symbolize three key aspects of Christ’s identity. The gold points to Jesus’ royalty, the frankincense to his divinity, and the myrrh to his humanity.
Pairing Gifts of the Magi with our Holy Crown Sacred Anointing Roller is a reverent way to honor your Christian faith and makes the perfect Christmas gift. We've researched extensively the aromatic plants mentioned in the Bible as well as aromatics used specifically for spirituality in creating this sacred symphony. Each of the oils in our custom crafted blend has a multitude of healing and spiritual properties; together, they offer a sweetly scented, potent combination that offer healing, protection, wisdom and peace. Fair warning...our Holy Crown rollers tend to sell out fast! Every year we double our batch size from the year before, and every year we still run out of them too soon!
This season we have a new product that we think will make a most divine pairing with these two favorites. Our Soul Flight bath bombs feature gold dusted angel wings and a delicate moonflower scent. This trio of gold-studded beauties is sure to become a popular gift set! In fact, we just might put a set together soon!
The Old Magick of Christmas
It's quite apparent now that this continually evolving celebration that we call Christmas has been celebrated in every culture across the world in different ways since antiquity. Each culture brings their own unique flair to the season with stories and myths that continue to deeply influence their modern day celebrations. Not all the the figures that play a role in this season of joy are....well, joyous, LOL. Jolly 'ol St. Nick may be the most benign of them all, but he has a whole host of villainous side kicks, from Krampus in Austria to Knecht Ruprecht in Germany, Black Pete in the Netherlands, and many more. There are curious beings such as elves in Iceland, the Norwegian nisse and tomten in Scandinavia, trolls, witches and even a child-eating Yule cat.
At the root of many of these stories and traditions, pre-dating the story of the Christ child, is the Winter Solstice. The Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, which takes place on December 21st, is, and has always been, a profound way to tune into the magic and beauty of the season. When the days grew colder and the nights grew longer, people of ancient times would light candles and gather round fires to lure back the sun. They would bring out their stores of food and enjoy feasting and festivities. Dances were danced and songs were sung, and all would delight in decorating their homes. Throughout history, celebrating the solstices has been a way to renew our connection with each other and with the Divine through acts of goodwill, special rituals, and heightened awareness. By performing simple rituals with personal meaning to celebrate the solstice, these rituals will serve as touchstones to help us cultivate an attitude of receptiveness and appreciation that will carry us through the holiday season with more ease.
A good starting point for honoring the Winter Solstice might be to make a promise this winter to spend more time listening, watching, and honoring the slower, quieter rhythm of the season. Unplug from the socials for a spell, have dinner by candlelight, sit around the fire with family and friends and appreciate one another, spend more time outdoors in the quiet liminal space of sunrise or sunset. Reflect the stillness of the day by cultivating stillness in yourself.
Our family’s own tradition is to create a yule log and burn it ceremoniously while giving thanks for all the blessings that have come our way in the past year. The tradition of the Yule log began in Norway, where a giant log was hoisted onto the hearth to celebrate the return of the sun each year. Hold a simple ritual by having each family member write down wishes, place them in the log, and then burn it in your fireplace, or fire pit. It's a perfect time to talk about your hopes for abundance, good health, and happiness in the next twelve months. You’ll want to select a nice sized log as your base, decorating it with cuttings from holly, pine, etc, using twine to hold them in place and red ribbon to make it artful. Pictured here is one we burned a few years back that I decorated with pine trimmings, pinecones, holly and ivy.
Now, if you've been around here awile, you know we don't make candles very often so when we do, we try to make them extra special. This holiday season, we've created a limited edition Winter Solstice ritual intention candle that we hope you will love. Exquisite black matte tumblers with a reflective gold interior offer an opulent aesthetic. Our custom blended fragrance offers a singular aromatic experience that fully captures the essence of the Winter Solstice. Invigorating top notes of eucalyptus and bracing, tingly peppermint evoke crisp, cool winter vibes alongside lively mid-notes of a pine forest while earthy notes of cedarwood and patchouli add depth and grounding.
Sunny citrine stones adorn the top of our Winter Solstice candle to reflect and honor the returning Sun. Citrine carries the energy of the sun, radiating warmth and positivity and is known to be a happy stone that brings joy, wonder, delight and enthusiasm. Smoky quartz stones also feature here to promote grounding, renewal, and inner strength - a helpful ally as we begin our journey into the new year. A sprinkling of black and gold glitter and twinkling stars evoke the long winter night. Each candle has been Reiki blessed for your highest and greatest good.
We hope that you will enjoy our beautiful selection of Winter Solstice products - candles, artisan botanical soap, and seasonal ritual aroma rollers.
A Winter Solstice blessing:
May the longest night and the shortest day bring restto my mind and soul, I pray.
May I find guidance and may I find peace,as the circle of light will slowly increase.
I embrace the magic that the darkness bears,breathe deep in the chill, and shift in the air.
May I always be blessed with the light from within,and may well-being be mine as the new cycle begins.
Bountiful Solstice blessings to all, my friends, and a very Merry Christmas!
xoxo
Stephanie
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