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These are our favorite festive candles for the holiday season

Julie Scagell
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If you’re anything like us, you’re obsessed with candles. They’re great all year-round, but they’re especially lovely around the holidays when they fill our homes with all the nostalgic fragrances of a childhood spent making cookies and gingerbread houses. Before you begin your seasonal candle haul, check out our top picks below. We scoured the internet to find some of the best, most well-reviewed, and amazing smelling options that will get you through the entire holiday season.

Best home candle

If you don’t get to spend the holidays at home, we implore you to buy this Holiday Stroll candle from Homesick Candles. It smells like mulled wine, sandalwood, and memories of days gone by to cure any homesickness. This one burns for 60-80 hours, so you can keep it going all Christmas Day and beyond. It’s $34 (with 15% off if you sign up with your email) and is the perfect gift for someone who won’t be home this holiday.

Best evergreen smell for your fake tree

If you opted for a fake tree either for the ease of it, because of pets, or due to allergies to trees (and mess) but love the smell of a freshly cut tree, check out this ILLUME Balsam and Cedar Mercury glass candle from Crate and Barrel. For $58, your home will smell of stunning balsam, wood, moss, and cinnamon, filling your living room with aromas that will make any guest believe you just went out into the middle of the forest and cut a tree down yourself.

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Best seasonal candle

We love everything about Bath and Body Works’ three-wick candles because they burn for such a long time and produce a nice, but not overwhelming, scent in any room they’re in. At the top of our list is this ‘Tis the Season candle, which sells for $25.50 (but you can usually find a buy 2-get-2 or 40% off sale around the holidays). The vibrant red color and scents of apple, cinnamon, and cedarwood allow you to hold Christmas right in the palm of your hand.

Best ‘I can’t bake’ candle

If you love the idea of your kitchen smelling like snickerdoodle cookies, pumpkin pie, and apple pie but aren’t quite an expert baker yet, we’ve got you covered. We love this Pumpkin Clove jar candle from Anthropologie because it smells like sugar, spice, and everything nice. For $34, you’ll have a sugary sweet candle that burns for 70 hours.

Best wood-burning candle

If you can’t be around an open fire this year, you can still get the benefits of the wood-burning smells. This Hearth-Scented candle from Nest is available at Nordstrom for $44-70 depending on the size you choose. With hints of frankincense and fiery embers, it smells just like reading The Night Before Christmas around the fire before putting the kids to bed.

We hope you love these festive holiday candles as much as we do. If you burn candles daily during the season, you may want to consider buying more than one so you have the perfect scents to last you through the end of December. Mixing all of these scents will fill your home with all the best aromas of the season whether you’re baking in the kitchen and cutting down trees or buying your pies from the store and evergreens from the lot.

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Julie Scagell
Julie Scagell
Contributor
I am a freelance writer based in Minneapolis, MN. My passions include my dogs, talking about my dogs, and taking pictures of…
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