WILL SANTA BRING YOU SOME SCENTSICLES?

An artificial fiber optic Christmas tree (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Laura Benson calls herself a "scent person." On her desk at home in Centennial, Colo., she keeps a bottle of Coppertone sunscreen lotion that she flips open now and then for a whiff of the beach.

But every holiday season, Mrs. Benson's artificial Christmas tree left her pining for the aroma of real evergreens. "That's of course one of the hardest things about artificial trees," she says. "They don't smell like real trees."

Then last year, Mrs. Benson bought a five-and-half-inch-long pine-scented ornament that she says makes her family's artificial tree smell real. (click below to read more)



Mrs. Benson also tucked one of the scented ornaments into a basket in her dining room usually filled with dried flowers. She sometimes sniffs the tree for another reminder of the holidays.

"I don't know if it's every bit as good as the real thing," she says of the ornaments, called ScentSicles. "But if you did a blind smell test, it would probably be hard to tell the difference."

Sometimes, all we want for Christmas is the smell. And some Americans, whether they're pro-fir or pro-faux, are turning to homemade potions or manufactured scents to spruce up the holidays. As they say in Southern California, it's beginning to smell a lot like Christmas.

People long have used decorative candles, potpourri or air fresheners to liven the holidays, or, as Febreze commercials make clear, to make garbage smell like a day in May. Some people use low-cost tricks such as soaking pine needles in water placed at the base of trees or tossing pine cones in the fireplace.

Today, people seeking smells-like-Christmas have more options than ever. Sean Selman, a 40-year-old communications official, tried out a Fraser Fir candle as an alternative to the effort of trimming his Atlanta apartment with garlands of greenery. Mr. Selman knew the candle was just the thing when he opened the box at his office desk.

"Everyone's head popped up and said, 'What's that smell? Why does it suddenly smell like a Christmas tree in here?'" he says.

People seeking holiday-odor oomph say Christmas just feels wrong if the smell is off. Pamela Dalton, an olfactory scientist with the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in Philadelphia, says the link between warm emotions and evergreen may be strong because people don't typically use conifer scents at other times of the year.

Scent-seeking sometimes goes awry. Last year, Ruth Kaplan of Austin, Texas, took home a free sample of ScentSicles she picked up at her exercise club. But a couple of days after Ms. Kaplan hung the ornament in her kitchen, she was hit with the overwhelming scent of what she thought was a leaking container of "those nasty pine cleaners."

Ms. Kaplan relegated the ScentSicles to a guest washroom. "It was not a successful experiment," she says.

"Not everyone is going to love every fragrance," says Amy Sleep, ScentSicles' vice president of marketing, who says the Atlanta company makes a range of scents for different noses. Nick McKay, chief executive of ScentSicles maker EnviroScent Inc., says ScentSicles combine natural and synthetic evergreen oils, and the fragrances go through as many as 40 rounds of development before they are deemed just right.

Naturally, traditionalists say humbug to dressing up artificial trees with evergreen smells. "It seems like the same thing as giving people fake flowers for Valentine's Day," says Rick Dungey, spokesman for the National Christmas Tree Association, in Chesterfield, Mo., representing tree growers and retailers.

Mr. Dungey refers to artificial Christmas trees as "plastic tree-shaped decorations."

The smell of the holidays doesn't always mean evergreens. Senior Fragrance Development Manager Deborah Betz of International Flavors & Fragrances Inc., in New York, says changing holiday-odor fashion is trending this year toward hybrids of food and traditional Christmas scents like pine-cone-plus-apple.

Ms. Betz says manufacturers are also beginning to cater to foreign noses with different Christmas ideals. "A lot of people think the holidays should smell like booze," she says. She says she has seen a cranberry pear Bellini candle and one called bubbly champagne, with hints of citrus and red currant.

Even some people who buy real trees want extra Christmas zest. Graphic designer Brendan Hooley tried to amp up the smell of his live evergreen with scented candles, but found they "just didn't quite smell right." He liked a woodsy incense but was wary of burning it in front of smoke-sensitive friends.

Then last holiday season, Mr. Hooley, 36, found an evergreen-tree oil online. He dabbed a few drops on his branches and on pine-cone displays in his West Hollywood, Calif., home. "It smelled like Christmas," he says.

As for guests who remark that his home "smells festive," Mr. Hooley says he would never reveal his tree is smell-enhanced. "I've never had to come clean," he says.

Like some other scent supplementers, Mr. Hooley complains Christmas conifers just aren't as fragrant as they used to be.

That might not just be nostalgia playing a trick on him. Gary Chastagner, a Washington State University plant pathologist, says some prevalent tree species favored today for their hardiness or pest resistance—such as the Noble fir and Turkish fir—are less aromatic than once more popular varieties like the Douglas fir.

Sometimes holiday olfactory offerings are real stinkers. Limited Brands Inc.'s Bath & Body Works offers a "Thanksgiving" candle that is supposed to smell like buttered mashed potatoes. Many customer reviews are scathing. A Bath & Body spokeswoman declined to comment.

Always Christmas in Lake Orion, Mich., weighed dosing the 90,000-square-foot holiday showroom with a cinnamon-scented diffuser but was wary of tripping up people with allergies or who hated the smell, says store manager Teresa Miller.

"Snow" is among top-selling scents for the holidays, along with "Egg Nog," at Demeter F.L. Inc., maker of scents such as "sushi" and "holy water" for homes and perfume. Chief Executive Mark D. Crames says Demeter spiked a creamed-corn scent that was in development because, he says, "It was God awful."

And Mr. Crames doubts customers want to smell like baked ham during the holidays.

"I'm pretty confident about that," he says. "Savory isn't wearable."