"When I was a kid in the early '40s it was a thrill to get a tangerine in my Christmas stocking. Having a bowl in the kitchen now takes me back to that magical time." Even today, she says, when she thinks of Christmases past, "one of my greatest recollections is how I felt when I received my first bicycle when I was 10 years old; it was my brother's old bike and my dad had cut the crossbar off, cleaned it up and painted it. I was so excited."
Few things stir up the holiday spirit more than different scents. "They take you back to when and where you smelled the scent in the first place," says Watson, "and all the emotions, memories and feelings you were having at the time."
Our sense of smell (called olfaction) is intimately connected to the part of the brain that triggers emotional memory, says Rachel Herz, a cognitive neuroscientist at Brown University Medical School in Providence, R.I., and author of The Scent of Desire (HarperCollins, 2007). "Before you even have a chance to figure out what the smell is, you have an immediate emotional response." Herz says research has shown that our responses to smells are learned. "The way an odour makes us feel and the way we respond to it has to do with how we first experienced the smell."
At the same time, there is folklore about different aromas, and aromatherapy claims that different scents provide health and healing benefits, too.
Here is a guide to common holiday aromas, how to get them into your home and what they may do for you.
Christmas trees
Putting up the Christmas tree is a wonderful holiday tradition, and the woodsy aroma of fresh pine or other evergreens fills the home for days. In studies by Dr. Alan Hirsch, a psychiatrist and neurological director at The Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago, the smell of fresh pine "evoked feelings of nostalgia," he says, "and 84 per cent of the time, these feelings were associated with a positive mood."
At home
Buy a real Christmas tree or wreaths for mantels, doors and staircases. If you have an artificial tree, spray or diffuse a pine aroma. Diffusers, sold in drugstores, department and specialty stores, range from candle diffusers, to electric (plug-in) ones, to lamp rings (which use the heat from a lightbulb to heat and diffuse the oil). Always follow the directions that come with diffusers and essential oils.
Page 1 of 3 -- Learn why cinnamon, cloves and eucalyptus are a treasured holiday scent on page 2
