One of the loveliest things anyone has said about my home is that it always smells nice. I hardly ever notice it, to be honest, but thinking about it they are probably right. In winter there will almost certainly be woodsmoke and beeswax polish.
Most of the things designed to make our houses smell festive are uniformly nauseous. They are the very essence of the fake Christmas. Those ‘Yule-scented’ candles, usually red, that smell of cinnamon and orange, or plug-in room fragrances that smell like cheap air-freshener. Hideous. A real Christmas will smell of itself without us trying to evoke it.
The tree, of course. The scent of the tree will vary according to the variety. The smell comes from a cocktail of compounds, including a-pinene and ß-pinene, in which conifers are particularly abundant, and bornyl acetate, known as the heart of pine. Balsam, Douglas and Nordmann firs are particularly high in the balsamic and camphor compounds. The reason the tree smells so strongly when you first bring it into the house is because the sap continues to rise in a freshly-cut tree. As the cut tree ages, the sap stops moving and the smell fades.
There is a difference between the smell of winter and winter smells. The latter tend to be induced by us – the smell of a potato baking, of logs burning or of hot chocolate. But winter has its own smell: step outside on a frosty morning and you are smelling the cold. That scent of smoke we detect despite the lack of a fire nearby is due to the fact that smoke doesn’t rise as well in cold air, so any there is will stay closer to the ground.
Evergreens, freshly cut, give subtle seasonal notes. Holly, mistletoe and laurels all work. Eucalyptus will make your home smell like granddad’s chest rub. I would have to add the sweet, Barbara Cartland fragrance from a bowl of hyacinths too, though really only from a nostalgia point of view. My father always insisting on having a bowl of them ready in time for Christmas. He would force them in a dark cupboard under the stairs, then in the airing cupboard. He usually managed to get them to perform on cue.
Bay shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me, being one of the more fragrant evergreens, but I have only just realised its seasonal notes. The essential oil made from its leaves (I am talking bay laurel – Laurus nobilis – here) is rather like having a little bottle of Christmas around. A few drops on a saucer or an oil burner, or dribbled on to a few dry leaves and twigs in a bowl, will scent the house subtly for several hours. There are some good bay candles around too.
Fire
Fire has always been at the heart of it all. The place where everyone gathered, for warmth and for safety. Flames to warm us from the cold, but also to ward off danger. Flames to keep wild animals at bay. Flames to sit round and read, a place for conversation. Now a real fire is a rare and wonderful thing. It is hard work: the carrying of logs, the lighting of kindling and taking the ashes out, but nothing can match it.
A fire is a magical thing. There are those who worship them, literally. Zoroastrians, some Vedic branches of Hindu religion, the Romans and the Greeks have all at some time worshipped the fire or the hearth. The purity of the fire, its ability to render food from the inedible to the edible and the protection it affords, are all worthy of worship.
I have two fires burning at home. On a winter’s night, the room changes the instant they are lit. Bricks and mortar transcend from house to home. The fire lit, the mood of the room changes too. Shoes are removed, feet are put up on sofas, we tuck ourselves up. In truth, after a day’s work, we sleep too. Friends joke that within ten minutes of me lighting the fire, they are asleep. Cosy.
There is much to watch in the flames. We say they ‘dance’. And with good reason. The flames flicker and wave, float and soar as the mood takes them. Sometimes the embers are even more beautiful than the flames. I could watch them for hours.
We shouldn’t ignore the ashes. You can use a small amount of them on the garden. But they should be ashes from wood, not coal, and shouldn’t be used near blueberries, azaleas or potatoes, which don’t like a high pH. Burned wood doesn’t contain nitrogen, but it is a source of potassium, phosphorus and calcium. Useful for raising the pH of the soil if it is low, by which I mean below pH 6.
There is a little Japanese onsen I visit. It takes a while to get there, as there is no rail connection. The wooden building is hidden in the hills, and is probably my favourite place on Earth. It is undeniably beautiful, with its lovingly polished wooden floors and moss-covered garden. What sets it firmly as the place where I want my ashes scattered is the constant scent of smoke. It filters through the house but also through the gardens – little trails of blue-grey cross your path as you walk along the stone paths, or warm the wooden arbours where you sit and read.
What we burn affects the smell of the fire and also the heat it gives. My parents burned coal and logs. I have never liked the smell of a coal fire, preferring to use logs. You need kindling to light a fire – thin, crisp sticks of wood that are, crucially, dry. A few sheets of newspaper rolled into loose balls tucked among them, and then some larger logs to burn slowly. The reason most fires go out is because the logs are too large, or there is not enough air. A loose arrangement of scrunched paper, kindling and small logs, no thicker than your arm, is a good start. Newspaper lights more easily than the paper from glossy magazines. (My stepmother used to roll up newspaper, then tie a loose knot in each roll. Worked a treat.) A taper, if you have such a thing, is better, safer, than a match or a lighter.
Although my parents and grandmother kept a fire going, almost constantly, in the hearth, the idea is not a practical one for most of us. A wood-burning stove is one answer. The flames hidden behind glass, they can be left burning safely while you are out. They are clean and easy to deal with. They are the heart of many a Scandinavian and Japanese home, and are becoming popular in Britain too. A wood-burner has a constant glow, the low golden flame that greets and warms and toasts us. It is my next project.
Fire has always been precious, particularly when it was the only form of heating or cooking. Therefore taxable. In 1662, on May 19, a hearth tax was introduced, where householders had to pay two shillings for each hearth. Payment was twice a year, once at Michaelmas and again at Lady Day, March 25. The poor and charitable institutions were exempt. The tax was abolished by William III in 1689. Good for him.
For me the cold months are the best of times. And at the heart of those months lies Christmas.
Celebrating Christmas
Christmas is celebrated by Christians and non-Christians alike. It is a cultural event as much as a religious one, and its history is confused. Many of the festival’s observances date from pre-Christian times, and those who celebrate it as a purely religious event might be surprised to find how much of the festivities hails from pagan times. We celebrated winter long before we celebrated Christmas. (Saturnalia was the Roman festival in honour of the God Saturn, with feasting lasting from December 17 to the 23rd.) Happily atheist, I celebrate Christmas as much as anyone, with food and gifts and, yes, carols, but I fully accept that much of my own celebration has a religious history.
I go along with the religious details of Christmas because they have become interwoven with the cultural side of the festivities. The Nativity is as much a part of Christmas as Santa Claus and the pagan habit of bringing holly and mistletoe into the house. It is almost impossible to separate the pagan from the pious, and why would I want to anyway when December 25 was chosen simply because it landed in the middle of what was already a pagan festival?
Christmas is a vast steaming pudding of Christianity, folklore, paganism, tradition and commerce. Those of us who are part of a tolerant, open-minded and intelligent society can make our Christmas whatever we want it to be. To put it another way, we can have our cake and eat it.
The best of Christmases, the worst of Christmases
We tend to remember Christmases with exemplary clarity. Something unusual that happens over these twelve days at the heart of winter is unlikely ever to be forgotten. Even the most innocent event