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It’s around this time of year that I rewatch one of my favorite “Saturday Night Live” skits: “The Christmas Candle” from a 2016 episode featuring actress Emma Stone.
In the skit, Stone and “SNL” cast members Kate McKinnon and Aidy Bryant sing out in gratitude for scented candles, an easy-to-find, easy-to-deliver Christmas gift. It makes me laugh because I can’t count how many times I’ve gifted someone a candle in a pinch. But I’ve probably received just as many in return, especially when it’s cold out.
“The holiday season is candle season,” said Austen Hemlepp, the general manager at Candlefish, a candle store in Boston’s Back Bay.
Hemlepp says her store sees a spike in foot traffic and sales around this time of year. “I feel like everyone can relate to just wanting to cozy up with a lit candle,” she said.
Despite this popularity, scented candles have sort of a bad rap as a low-effort gift, as parodied in the skit. This is, to an extent, true: You don’t need to put much effort into gifting a candle. That’s because chandlers — the people who make candles — do most of the consideration.
It takes an understanding of physics and chemistry to balance wax and fragrance to craft a candle that smells nice and burns safely inside of a home. “Making candles is actually pretty scientific,” Ashley Rossi, the owner of Noted Candles in Hingham, told me.
How complicated could it be? I spoke to Rossi and took a candlemaking class with Hemlepp to find out.
Candles contain layers
Fine candles contain top, middle and base (or dry) fragrance notes.
Top notes are the quickest-burning molecules — what we smell right as the candle is lit. These remain prominent for the first half hour of your burn, said Hemlepp. Then come the middle notes, which are what you’ll mostly smell throughout the candle’s burn time. Base notes, made up of heavier molecules, can be detected while the candle is burning, too. But they really come in once the candle has been snuffed out, creating “that kind of lingering scent” that sticks around the room, Hemlepp said.
This is why the smell you notice when a candle is cold isn’t necessarily what it will smell like when it’s burning. Hemlepp said it involves a lot of chemistry, much like wine.
Fragrance oils are derived from different essential oils and synthetic chemicals. For example, there’s balsam fir essential oil, which possesses that “Christmas tree” scent, or the chemical Iso E Super, which mimics human musk.
It’s the job (yes, the actual job) of a perfumer — also called a “nose” — to sniff out which notes will blend nicely to create the concentrated fragrance oils that chandlers like Rossi and Hemlepp use in their candles.
During the candle making class, I smelled a “woody” fragrance oil that was composed with notes of santal, oud, and cedar. Even fragrance oils that seemed more one-note, like “pine,” were layered for effect. “Pine is a really sharp fragrance naturally,” said Hemlepp. “This one is softened up a little bit because we’ve added eucalyptus and juniper berries. So there’s a little bit of calm and sweetness thrown in there.”
It’s pretty similar to how spray-on perfumes are crafted. (That’s why you’ll sometimes see popular perfumes sold as candles, too.) However, the type of wick and wax a candle is made with can change the way we experience its fragrance. But you’ll only be able to notice the impact those factors have by lighting your candle on fire.
Burn, baby, burn!
What you smell when you light a candle is the combination of the wax and the fragrance oil. That mixture is also “the accelerant that makes your flame burn,” said Rossi. The wick at the center, coated with wax as well, is what sustains it.
The wick utilizes a physical process called capillary action. After the heat of the flame melts the wax around it, the liquid wax travels up the absorbent wick and is vaporized into molecules hydrogen and carbon. “ That’s why it’s called a wick,” said Rossi. “It’s wicking the liquid from the surface of the candle up to fuel the flame.”
Fine wicks are usually made with cotton or wood, two absorbent natural materials. Rossi says it can be challenging to get the right wick, fragrance and wax combination so that the candle burns evenly and consistently.
“Traditionally, and still today, most mass-manufactured candles are made using paraffin wax, which is a synthetic wax derived from petroleum,” said Rossi. Paraffin wax is “completely engineered to function for candles,” she said, and can powerfully distribute fragrance through a room due to its quick-burning properties.
But as a petroleum product, paraffin wax generates greater emissions than other waxes, and Rossi says her more health-conscious customers don’t like the idea of burning paraffins in their homes. She says soy wax is now becoming the standard for most fine candle makers. “It’s pretty readily available,” said Rossi. “It’s grown in the U.S. It’s relatively easy to work with, and it takes fragrance really well.”
Because it doesn’t burn as fast, soy wax doesn’t dissipate fragrance throughout a room as strongly as paraffin wax does. But there are some benefits to a slow burn. Hemlepp says a single 9-ounce soy wax candle comes with a burn time of around 50 to 70 hours. “ If the same size were a pure paraffin wax candle, it would probably only last about 20 hours,” said Hemlepp. “So the wax type makes a huge difference.”
Hemlepp suggests burning a candle for about 90 minutes each time to get the most from its fragrance and to help it burn evenly. (If you burn it once a day, a 9-ounce soy wax candle lasts around a month at that rate.) That’s one month of cozy, fragrant winter nights — which makes a pretty decent gift, if you ask me.
P.S. — I would be remiss if I didn’t also wax poetic about the glimmering beauty of candlelight around the holidays. This eye-catching display reminded me of Cognoscenti contributor Rich Barlow’s essay on how he manages to keep real candles on his Christmas tree at home.