6 aromatherapy blends for Christmas

Aromatherapy blends for Christmas are an easy way to bring a festive atmosphere to your home. Did you ever wonder why those scents are associated with Christmas?

Why do we eat gingerbread at Christmas? Nobody is absolutely sure. Ginger was first cultivated in China and was used, like now, as a medicinal plant. The plant arrived to Europe via the Silk road and was used to improve the taste of meat preservatives. The first “gingerbread” recipe came from Greece and was simply preserved ginger, nothing like the cookies we have today. This preserved ginger was sacrified to the gods. In medieval europe gingerbread was considered a festive food and was made only in Christmas and Easter. Now we can eat gingerbread whenever we want, it only takes a little trip to the bakery or a baking afternoon but gingerbread still belongs to Christmas.

BTW, the house from Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm brothers was probably a gingerbread house.

And what about apple pie? The first pies were actually filled with meat, even when they started adding fruit is could be pears and broth pie or something of the like. Sugar was actually very expensive until the 16th century so peasants used to eat a kind of wheat porridge with dried fruit, meat, sugar and spices as a festive food for Christmas. Only after sugar prices decreased fruit pies were introduced but only in festivals and special occasions, first to the noble class and eventually to the lower classes too.