Yes, I know. Snow doesn’t have an “e” on the end. And sure, it’s “for” not “fir.”
Funny, my daughter (she’s 10) is super-attuned to southern accents; and for some reason, she doesn’t want one. (Can you imagine that?) She corrects me on “fir” and also gets me on “dee” for “day,” as in Mon-dee. No, no, no, she says. It’s “daaaay, not deeeee.” And you know what else? She tries NOT to say “y’all.” (Whose child is she any way?)
Anyway, I spend my winter in the south dreaming of snow, chanting for snow, dancing for snow. I saw a flurry the other day and was THRILLED!
A fresh cut fir tree is the best smell in the world. Second would be hot spiced cider.
When I was in elementary school there was a girl in high school named Snow White. She had jet black hair and I thought she was so beautiful!
it’s the combination of the pine (from the tree & the wreaths that are on the inside & outside of my front door!) when they are heated from the warmth of our home combined with the smells of fresh cookies (sugar cookies & their intense vanilla along with gingerbread men!) — I’d love to bottle those together!
Here’s wishing you all your dreams!
I love the smell of a pine tree, acutally a pine forest. When I was little my grandfather had a place near a pine forest and my cousin and I would lay on the pine needles and talk. It was like being under a Christmas tree! So, pine is my favorite Christmas (and all year round) smell. And baking cookies comes in second!
Sending BIG snow prayers your way! I completely understand! Mt favorite Christmas smell? Oranges with cloves poked into them. Every year, every stocking! Merry Christmas!
The smell of cedar trees. I go to tree lots just to smell the roping and trees lined up ever so carefully. The smell of cookies baking as I slap the hands of every little boy and big boy trying to snatch one off the cookie sheet. The smell of snow in the air like today in Kirkwood. You can smell it and if you look hard enough you can see the tiny flurries flying all around. Christmas is on the way I can smell it in the air.
A pine smell means Christmas to me. After discovering my son is allergic to pine, we’ve not a "real" tree since. After all, Christmas shouldn’t be torture for someone!!! I get my fix by going outside on a snowy day and bending a few needles on the outdoor trees. A junkie has to get her fix somehow:) Hot spiced cider and baking vanilla sugar cookies are right up there too.
No snow here yet,I was hiking yesterday in the woods outside of Spokane and climbed into the snow and at a
particular switchback a huge aroma of cedar brought back
Christmas memories. I heart Christmas too!!!
Another aroma fav for me is Yankee Candle scent "Jack Frost", very much peppermint……yummo
Happiest of holidays to you and your family, Rebekah.
I love your posts 🙂 My favorite smell is gingerbread…it just SCREAMS Christmas to me! Merry Christmas everyone!
My favorite Christmas scent is cinnamon. I burn cinnamon candles all year long and always double the cinnamon in my recipes.
Christmas smells like wassail served outdoors in the woods to the carolers who stopped by to serenade. My recipe is one gallon of apple cider, eight cinnamon sticks (think Santa’s reindeer, eight star anise, eight cloves, eight whole nutmeg, one sliced orange, and one sliced lemon. Simmer on your stove or in a crockpot for at least one hour before testing. I don’t add alcohol but I hear a tot of rum is nice. Your home will smell wonderful and everyone enjoys it. I also light bayberry and peppermint candles.
The smells that take me down Christmas Memory Lane (yes, it’s a real place) are….
Cinnamon,Clove decorated oranges,peppermint,butter cookies,early morning coffee mixed with the smoke of my fireplace,my REAL Christmas tree:), Hunting for the greens we use to make our wreaths every year,pancakes and pj’s with syrup on them (spills will always happen), a snowy dark, sharply cold quiet smell that makes you feel blessed, OH! and the smell that would explode into the living room every year when I was little. My parents had a Christmas Barrel in the attic. Every year when mom would pry it open,cinnamon and pop-cycle sticks and candle wax and pine would all burst out of the barrel.Mom would always wait until I was standing right beside it and then open it. It was almost like there was all the memories and joy from the last year in that barrel! I will always remember that smell 🙂
My family loves to play the game of counting how many people say the word "fir". It is quite comical fir us!! I LOVE the smell of gingerbread baking. . . .it wafts thru the entire house and just makes you feel good. I think I finally found my favorite tho. . . from Salt City Candle. It ‘s a candle called "Christmas Trimmings". It is a combo of evergreen boughs, cranberries, oranges & freshly baked goodies. It is so yummy that you almost need to smell it to understand the feeling. I do save this one for Christmas time only, and I get excited when I pull it out of the cupboard and light it for the first time/again. It just makes me smile °Ü° Enjoyed your post today. . . a "feel good" post. Merry Christmas!!
I love,love,love the smell of Christmas trees (fir!!!!)!! When I go to the grocery store I go over and stick my face in them and INHALE!!!!!!!!!! (I’m not able to have a real tree anymore, but the Balsam & Cedar from Yankee Candle does fill my house with the most WONDERFUL smell)And I’m right there with ya’ on the peppermint coffee!!!!! Gotta’ have it!! Merry Christmas Rebekah and family!!!!!!
My favorite smells of Christmas is cinnamon and the woodsy smells, mint is pretty good too! Sending you snow energy for the holidays! Farm Girl Hugs! Florence
Merry Christmas Rebekah! I just love your words! Like you, I’ve still only got up one Christmas decoration and in fact, my fall wreath is still on the front door! My favorite smells of Christmas are, chocolate, pie and vanilla scented candles…and PEPPERMINT! We Brigham’s Peppermint Ice-cream too! I don’t think there’s anything low fat about it! We also like to take things nice and slow during the holiday season,nothing fancy, just good food, lots of love and plenty of Christmas spirit to last the whole year! Come by and see me on my Beach Blog this Friday for my farmgirl Christmas entry! Lot’s of love and thanks so much for your wonderful way with words all year long her my blogging sister from the south!
Farmgirl hugs,
Deb
My favorite holiday scent this year is Mrs. Meyer’s Iowa Pine scented hand soap and candles. I can’t get enough!
Merry Christmas!
I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Since I grew up on a farm in Colorado I’m very familiar with the Colorado Blue Spruce which is also the state tree and my favorite tree.
Christmas smells like the blue spruce tree! Fragrant evergreens all make me think of Christmas! Ahhhhhh!!!!
We have purposely planted some in our yard as well and they are just the most stunningly beautiful, majestic trees. We also love to decorate them with Christmas lights . . and our neighbors tell us they enjoy them as well!
Merry Christmas!
CJ
Sis & I were in the produce aisle at the grocery store the other day and got a whiff of the boxes of nuts and a bunch of oranges and apples towering nearby. It reminded us of Christmas Eve after being in the church program when all us kids formed a line in the basement and waited for our anticipated sack, It was always filled with mixed nuts, an orange, and an apple.
Christmas always smells like pine and/or fir trees. I have an allergy to them, so after the first night I can’t smell it anyway! Stay plugged up until the tree goes out the door! Oh well. Also chocolate…cookies baking in the oven, dipped chocolate spoons, fudge. Always at Christmas.
Hope your trip was snow-filled!
Christmas aroma-freshly cut NC evergreens, peppermint candy canes
I left one of my favorite scents on the other blog. Another is sugar cookies baking. I guess my Christmas smells all have to do with sweets. I have three daughters and the name I always loved I finally gave to the third daughter. Shannon. But I also love the other girls names or I would not have named them Elizabeth and Samantha who we all call Sam. Now we have Grand daughters Savannah and Natalie, love those names also. My name, I always thought was so plain and there were always 3-4 Brenda’s in every class. I will slow down the week after next. We have our family here the weekend before Christmas which leaves the week of Christmas quiet and relaxed. Have the best holiday ever!
I gave my answer to Christmas aromas before I read the article. I was surprised to see our answers were so similar!!!!
Oh, the smell of spiced cider, or Wassail, that fills our house this time of year. I even "cheat" and simmer some spices in cider on the stove when it is NOT a beverage. Makes me all dreamy/fuzzy feeling.
I know a girl named Candy and she married a guy with the last name Christmas, isn’t that just neat? Any way my favorit Christmas smell is ginger.
Peppermint, vanilla, cinammon! Christmas baking is my favorite part of the Christmas season.
The smell of gingerbread baking, and the anticipation of topping it off with homemade whipped cream! Yum!
My daughter’s name is Noelle. And I always loved that name. Anyway, my favorite smell at Christmas is the kitchen on Christmas Day. I love when all of the food is baking and cooking, getting ready for the family.
My favorite smell during the Christmas holidays and at this time of year is "the woods". To walk outside on a cold clear crisp day and close your eyes and take a deep breath -you smell the trees and all the wonderful clean scents of being in the country (and there may be snow too). There’s no place like the countryside in the winter.
CHRISTmas smell means my mother’s kolache’ recipe. I swore as a child, teenager, young woman that I would NEVER make this stuff.
Yeah, right. I married a fella who just happens to adore nut filled kolache’, apricot filled kolache’, and on a really inspired day, cheese filled kolache’.
37 years later. I am still making this Slovakian sweet dough roll all wrapped jelly roll fashion with those fillings. When I can make it, lekvar. That is stewed prunes simmered to a thick black filling with a twist of homegrown meyer lemon.
Yep. I think he is going to keep me.
Merry CHRISTmas and God Bless you BIG!
Adore your writings, Miz Rebekah.
Grandma T over @
Tindel Den Cottage
A Christmas smell that I love is the fire in the fireplace. With that as my favorite there are many that follow.
My favorite smell at Christmastime is balsam. When I get my balsam tree I cut extra branches and make a spray for the door, decorate it with ribbons, berries, and holly. I love putting dried needles of balsam in little sachets or pillows, so that you can recapture the lovely scent all year long. So fresh and natural. And I agree with you about snow: it is so beautiful and romantic. I hope we get some soon instead of dreary rain here in Vermont!
I also love cinnamon and sugar cookies baking and Swedish toffee cooking on the stove…
And I love your slow decoration plan and relaxed view of the holiday! Yes!
Pine, nutmeg and cloves! Please enter me in the drawing!
The smell of pepermint candy canes, I agree with you there, except I don’t drink coffee, so I like to put a candy canes in my hot chocolate. The smell of sugar cookies baking or home made fudge.
Without a doubt, Christmas smells like fir trees to me. I love to go through a Christmas tree lot and just inhale the intoxicating aroma.
Dear City Farmgirl, Rebekah
I am a city farmgirl too, and I love the aromas that drift from the kitchens of my family and friends. The smell of the cinnamon scented pinecones and gingerbread man baking in the oven. There even seems to be a fresh sent of Christmas drifting through the streets of the city, it’s a special Christmas smell that is all its own. A winter perfume of the anticipated joys of this wonderful time of the year.
Dear City Farmgirl, Rebekah
I am a city farmgirl too, and I love the aromas that drift from the kitchens of my family and friends. The smell of the cinnamon scented pinecones and gingerbread man baking in the oven. There even seems to be a fresh sent of Christmas drifting through the streets of the city, it’s a special Christmas smell that is all its own. A winter perfume of the anticipated joys of this wonderful time of the year.
Cinnamon is my Christmas Scent
I am happy to hear that someone has the same feelings about scent that I do. I associate so many things by smell. The ground in the spring, the smell of clorine brings me back to my summers as a kid at the pool. Fall, my favorite time of year, the cinnamon of apple pies and for Christmas, bayberry. My mom always had a bayberry candle burning in the house and it reminds me of when we all were together.
Happy Christmas and much joy to you and your family.
The smell of the Christmas fir tree is absolutely my favorite smell. I could just stand there and breath in that smell all season. Next it would have to be the smell of baking, especially cinnimon. I like to heat cinnimon sticks and orange peels in a pan of water to smell up the house.
Merry Christmas!
Dear Rebecca,
Thanks for writing about your experiences. We live deep in the woods of Vermont. We are logging right now and there happens to be my favotite smell outside with the cut trees….white pine and spruce. All the branches I needed were already cut this year to make all the swags I needed. I also love the smell of cinnamon! Merry Christmas from Vermont!
Noreen
From my childhood on a 200 acre farm, I most remember the smells of fresh cut evergreens, hot cider, and home baked rolls and our secret recipe for pumpkin pie. Now with my four grandchildren, we have carried on those traditions and my sons and grandchildren will only eat this pumpkin pie and no other. And my son has taken up the ‘role’ (pun on words)of baking my Mother’s famous yeast rolls as we lost her in October after a tragic accident. Her legacy lives on through all of us and the smells are the best part. Thank you so much for reviving the really good memories in a very hard time. Bless you and all your traditions as well.
I love the smell of cinnamon! It always makes me think of wassil on the stove. Mmmmm….
There are so many great sights, sounds and yes scents to enjoy this time of year. My favorite is that of cinnamon scented pine cones. I am sensitive to scented products and can’t use a lot of chemical products that are scented. So my answer to car freshners, closet freshners and hiliday scented ornaments is to use cinnamon scented pine cones. they always go on sale this time of year so I replace the bag in my car, trunk and closets and usually buy at leat one bag to use in a glass hurricane lanterns with colored Christmas balls. Mmm. Yummy.
The smells to me that bring the holidays alive are Pine Trees, Sugar Cookies, Peppermint and Grandma! 🙂
Peace, Love and Joy to you, Always!
Hi Becka,I loved cinnimon,and we always had a cedar at our house cut from off the prairie,I also loved sassafrass tea dug from roots of a nearby tree this time of year.Have a wonderful xmas! carol
Plain and simple….CARDAMOM! It invokes Christmas, pine trees, snowy nights, baked goodies, home and hearth. Love it!
THANKS EVERYONE! THESE MIGHT JUST BE MY FAVORITE COMMENTS EVER!
WHAT WONDERFUL IMAGES AND MEMORIES YOUR AROMAS OF CHRISTMAS BROUGHT TO ME AS I READ YOUR WORDS.
AWESOME, JUST AWESOME. THANK YOU!!!
AND THE WINNER OF THE CALENDAR IS……
ADRIENNE!!!
CONGRATULATIONS ADRIENNE!
(EMAIL ME WITH YOUR MAILING ADDRESS atr rebekah at maryjanesfarm dot com)
YAY!
Thank you! I enjoyed reading your column as well as all the responses. We’re going to have a great Christmas season!
Wonderful blog! I found it while searching on Yahoo News. Do you have any tips on how to get listed in Yahoo News? I’ve been trying for a while but I never seem to get there! Many thanks
My blog is on educational toys for toddlers.
Hi, I know it’s late for the entry, but still wanted to thank you for the great post. It’s so near Christmas and we’ve been helping our son and his wife paint their ‘new’ home…a fixer-upper, (the best kind)…and helping them move in. We’re now running around like chickens with our heads cut off, but it’s worth it as they had need of much help-Our daughter-in-law just gave birth to their first child, a girl! They named her Gabriella Noel…We have already shortened it to Gabby, but I just love that they chose Noel as her middle name.