Christmas can feel like one non-stop, heady, rush can’t it? Candle advent calendars though can stand apart from the frantic pace of the festive period and encourage an altogether slower pace.
When we were little, our mum, who made our wonderful advent calendar every year, wouldn’t let us open them until after school. It felt like torture! Everyone else in the class would have started their day with a Santa-shaped bit of chocolate and we would have to wait until after school and after the long bus journey home. We had other similar rules like not opening any Christmas presents until Christmas day and having to wait until after stockings, after a big breakfast and after a treasure hunt before even touching one tree present. We don’t usually start opening the gifts under the tree until well after a midday. As a toddler and teen this was agony. As a 33 year old mother of two it’s still sometimes a challenge!
The point is, neither me nor my co-founder and sister, Abbie, are strangers to delayed gratification and in savouring the luxuries of life.
When we started dreaming about creating a luxurious candle advent calendar we knew we wanted to make something that helped you to slow down, rather than speed up, in the already fast-paced Christmas season.
An easy way to go slow
A piece of chocolate, while delicious, is over in a moment. And, while indulging in a piece of your favourite sweet treat every day seems a worthwhile act of indulgence for the month of December, it’s not an act that will materially change how you feel.
A candle advent calendar can have a much more significant impact on how you’re feeling and therefore, how you experience the whole festive countdown.
Lighting a scented candle is a mindful, restorative act in itself. Scent holds the capacity to truly impact how we’re feeling by sending powerful signals to our brains. Fragrance can, quite literally, change how we feel.
So, lighting a scent filled with winter spices and woody notes really can help to connect you to feelings of festive joy because of how effective the impact of scent association is on our emotions.
Or, smelling a candle filled with lavender really can help you to rest and relax, encouraging you to change gears at the end of the day.
Lighting a luxurious scented candle every day of December can do so much more than help you to count down to Christmas. It’s an easy way to go slow during a busy month.
Our luxurious tealight candle advent calendar
Our candle advent calendar comes in the form of 24 hand poured, scented tealights. It’s the only way to smell every scent in our range as every one of our Original Scent Recipes is featured in the advent calendar.
You can stem frantic thoughts with our Calm candle, or create that feeling of welcome home and warmth with our Home candle. The candle advent calendar also features the scents from our incredible Christmas range. From the magical scent of snow and starlight in our Wonder candle, to the richness of Christmas spices in our Tidings candle.
The limited edition calendar takes you on a scented voyage of discovery, helping to fine tune your Home Scent Practice and empowering you to learn how to use scent to change how you feel.
In addition to this, each Sunday includes an invite to a moment of mindfulness, with carefully curated content from us here at GHFS as well as exclusive contributions from a poet and a psychotherapist.
Every one of the hand-poured tealights is individually boxed, adding a sense of occasion and ritual to every day in December.
Using A Candle As An Advent Calendar
Another way to celebrate the countdown to Christmas, through scent, is to use a Christmas candle as an advent calendar.
Who says you need a numbered candle, or a 24 little cardboard doors to open, to help you countdown to Christmas? If you fancy trying something a little different then why not gradually burn your way through your favourite Christmas candle?
Using one glorious Christmas candle as an advent calendar allows you to luxuriate in your one favourite fragrance.
Start December with a new Christmas candle and decide a rough time every day when you’ll go to light the candle. I’m a parent so I love to light a candle once the kids are down, it feels like a marker moment and helps to ease the stress of a day running after toddlers.
You could choose the moment you come home from work, or perhaps an hour or so before bed so your bedroom smells glorious when you drift off to sleep? Or, even when you’re sitting down to eat every night.
It’s amazing how just adding the simple ritual of lighting a candle, at a similar time every day, can bring real intention and joy into your month.
Our Christmas candles at a glance
Midwinter Scented Candle
Original Scent Recipe: Pine Needles and Oud
Midwinter is filled with the rich, woody, resiny scent of winter nuts, oud and green spruce. This hand poured candle is designed to help welcome and mark the height of the winter season. This luxurious scent captures the beauty of nature at this time of year, while adding a touch of magic. While rich with layers of wood and intensely perfumed Oud, Midwinter captivates without overwhelming. It's an enveloping scent to accompany you through those cold, dark, winter nights.
Tidings Scented Candle
Original Scent Recipe: Pantry Spices and Seasoned Oak
The combination of woody spices and vanilla sweetness creates the ultimate in Christmas spice candles. The complex original scent recipe will flood your home with glad tidings and Christmas cheer, helping you to relax and unwind at the same time. Neither too sweet, nor too spicy, Tidings strikes the perfect balance with a careful layering of classic Winter spices with divine woody sweetness.
Wonder Scented Candle
Original Scent Recipe: Starlight and Snow
The fresh, lively, greenness of three different types of spruce are woven together with the incredible scent of snow and starlit nights. Using a careful blend of herbs and petrichor (the only oil to capture the scent of rain, of stone, of snow) this magical scent recipe fills your festive nights with wonder. This scent harnesses the incredible impact nature can have on us to help us return to wonder and to joy.
Twas The Night Before Scented Candle
Original Scent Recipe: Boardgames, Cinnamon Spice and Mince Pies
‘Twas The Night Before captures the scent of a home right on the cusp of that magic hour, on Christmas Eve, when all is quiet and everyone is united in joyful, anticipation of what’s to come. Its Original Scent Recipe of Boardgames, Cinnamon Spice and Mince Pies is deliciously sweet, spicy and woody.
This candle is for the Christmas devotees, the die hard celebrators, the present givers, stocking fillers, fridge-stuffers, Christmas adorers amongst us. May this year be our most magical yet.