You are looking for a frankincense and myrrh candle for Christmas because someone on your list loves the smell of a candlelit Christmas Eve service, and you want to hand her that memory in a jar. That smell has two sources. One is the resin smoking in the censer, and the other is the beeswax burning on the altar.
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The best gift for her is the Touch Grass candle in the 12 oz size. Its notes include galbanum, a green resin named beside frankincense in the incense recipe in the Book of Exodus, over a warm base of amber and cedarwood. MBur does not make a candle labeled frankincense and myrrh, so we want to be straight with you about that. What we do make, in our pure beeswax candles hand poured in New York City, is the other half of that church memory: the wax itself, carrying resin and wood notes into a living room full of family.
What she means when she asks for frankincense and myrrh
Frankincense is the dried sap of Boswellia trees, which grow in the dry hills of Oman, Yemen and Somalia. Harvesters cut into the bark and let the milky resin bead up and harden into pale drops over a few weeks. The MedlinePlus overview of frankincense from the National Library of Medicine covers where it comes from in plain terms.
Myrrh comes from a close cousin, the Commiphora tree. Its resin dries darker, close to the color of honey that has sat in the cupboard all winter. The two have traveled together for thousands of years, and the Christmas story puts them in the hands of the wise men.
Burned together, they give the smell most people file under church. Frankincense brings a dry, balsamic note with a lemony edge and a trace of smoke. Myrrh sits underneath it, warm and earthy, a little bitter, like the inside of an old wooden pew.
That is the scent she wants, and it explains the most common complaint about candles sold under that name. Plenty of them smell like vanilla frosting with a holiday label on the jar. A resin scent should smell dry and woody first, and sweet only at the edges.
Hold onto that test, dry first and sweet second. It also explains why the wax matters as much as the fragrance on top of it.
The wax that lit every church she remembers
For centuries, churches burned beeswax on the altar. Part of the smell she remembers from midnight Mass is that wax. It gives off a faint, warm honey note under the incense, whether the candle is scented or plain.
Beeswax comes straight from the hive. Worker bees make it from small glands on their bodies and shape it into comb, and beekeepers collect it as a byproduct of the honey harvest. People have burned it as candle wax since about 5,000 BCE, longer than any other material.
Most candles on a store shelf at Christmas use paraffin instead, and the path to that wax runs through an oil refinery. Crude oil gets heated and split into fuels like gasoline and diesel. A waxy residue is left at the end of that process. Refiners bleach and harden it, then sell it as candle wax. Paraffin is petroleum waste given a second job, and it leaves black soot on the rim of the jar.
Beeswax melts at a higher temperature than any other candle wax, so the flame works through it slowly. That is why our 12 oz size burns 80+ hours. A slow, steady melt pool also lets heavy base notes like amber and cedarwood rise evenly through the whole burn.
So the wax sets the floor for everything else. The next question is which scent sits on top of it.
Our top pick: Touch Grass, for the parent who hosts Christmas Eve
Picture the house at eleven on Christmas Eve. Everyone is back from the late service, coats are piled on the bed, and someone is setting out cookies nobody needs. The living room is warm and loud, and the host finally sits down.
That room is where our Touch Grass beeswax candle belongs. Its notes are Fig, Black currant, Galbanum, Coconut, Davana, Cedarwood, Amber, Orris, Tonka bean.
Galbanum is why it leads this list. It is a gum resin tapped from a Ferula plant that grows wild in Iran, and the Book of Exodus lists it with frankincense among the spices of the holy incense. It smells green and bitter, like a snapped stem with sap on your fingers. That sharp resin edge is the part she will recognize from church.
Under the green opening, amber and cedarwood carry the warmth. Amber in perfume reads as golden and resinous, and cedarwood smells like the inside of a cedar chest. Tonka bean softens the finish, so the scent stays dry first and sweet second, which is exactly the test from earlier.
Give her the 12 oz size, $65, with two wooden wicks and 80+ hours of burn time. Two wicks melt a wide pool quickly, which is what a big room full of people needs. It also means she can burn it most nights through the holidays and still have plenty left for January.
Here is how it plays out. She lights it when the first car pulls into the driveway. By the time the youngest grandchild is asleep on the couch, the wooden wicks are crackling and the room smells like fig and cedar, with that thin green line of resin running through it.
More picks, sorted by who is opening the box
Touch Grass ranks first because it holds the closest thing to church resin in our line. The picks below serve recipients with a smaller room, or a nose that leans toward spice over green.
For the friend in a small city apartment: Touch Grass in the 5 oz size
A studio with a radiator that clanks all night does fine with a single wick. The 5 oz size has one wooden wick and burns 40 hours. That fits a home where the couch sits ten feet from the stove.
She gets home from a holiday party, kicks off her boots and sets it on the windowsill. Within the hour, the galbanum and amber reach the far wall. Beeswax gives off light closer to natural sunlight than any other candle wax, so the flame casts a soft, warm glow on the snow piled on the fire escape.
This is the same scent and the same story as the 12 oz candle, sized for one room. If she lives alone and loves the smell of a Christmas Eve service, this is her candle.
For the one who loves the quiet week after Christmas: Sunday Reset in the 5 oz size
Some people love the days after the 25th more than the day itself. The house is quiet, the tree is still lit, and they finally have a morning with nothing on the calendar.
For her, pick our Sunday Reset beeswax candle. Its notes are Peppermint, Clove, Cedar, Patchouli, Vanilla, Eucalyptus. The peppermint and eucalyptus open cold, like stepping out onto the porch on a December morning.
Then clove and cedar take over, dark spice and dry wood. Patchouli gives the base an earthy depth, the same low warmth that myrrh brings to church incense. The vanilla stays at the edges, so it passes the dry first, sweet second test.
The 5 oz size, $32, burns 40 hours on one wooden wick. It suits a reading corner or a desk she sits at for a few quiet mornings a week.
On December 27, she sits down with coffee and a stack of thank-you cards. The candle on the desk smells like clove and cedar, the tree lights glow in the next room, and for an hour nobody needs anything from her.
A gift like this tends to start a habit. Customers who receive one scent often end up with a shelf of them, and one wrote this about the way they fill a room:
"Absolutely obsessed with M Bur Candle Co my roommate and I own 6/8 of the scents! They smell up a WHOLE room during the burn & even a while after blowing them out. I won't buy other candles anymore, they're just that good"
Paige
That room-filling throw comes from the same thing that makes a resin scent work at all, which is how the candle burns.
Why a resin scent needs a slow, even burn to come through
Resin and wood notes are heavy. Perfumers call them base notes, because their molecules are large and slow to lift into the air. On a candle that tunnels, the melt pool stays narrow, and those heavy notes never get enough warm wax to rise from.
A wooden wick burns as a wide, flat flame. That shape spreads heat across the whole surface, so the wax melts outward toward the glass. Beeswax melts slowly, which keeps the pool even and lets the base notes come up steadily from the first hour to the last.
The 12 oz size puts two of those wicks side by side, so the heat reaches the edges of the wider jar. This is why we match the larger size to a larger room. More melted wax means more scent moving into the air at once.
Everything else in the jar stays out of the way. Many candles use toxic fragrances containing phthalates, which are chemicals some makers add to help a scent cling. MBur uses only phthalate-free fragrance and no chemical dye, so the wax keeps its natural golden color.
Customers notice the slow burn. Here is how one described her first candle:
"From the packaging to the burn of the candle-everything was top-notch! Candle burned slowly and was exactly the amount of hours the company said it would burn."
Portia Darby
With the burn settled, the questions left are about fit: which scent and which size suit her room.
What givers ask before they wrap it
"She asked for frankincense and myrrh by name."
Tell her the story on the gift card. Touch Grass carries galbanum, the resin listed with frankincense in the oldest incense recipe in the Bible. It sits in beeswax, the same wax that lit the altar on the nights she remembers. She gets both halves of the church memory in one jar.
"A fig and green scent sounds more like spring."
The green part of Touch Grass sits at the very top. Amber, cedarwood and tonka bean carry the rest of the burn, warm and low, which is how it lands as a winter scent. If she leans toward spice, Sunday Reset gives her clove and cedar from the first hour.
"Her living room is big and open to the kitchen."
Choose the 12 oz size, with two wooden wicks, and set it near the center of the room, away from a draft or an open door. Ask her to let the first burn run until the melt pool reaches the glass. That first full melt sets the pattern for every burn after it.
How to present it so it feels like Christmas Eve
The wrapping can carry the same story as the scent. A few touches make the box feel like part of the holiday.
- Write the resin story on the card. Two lines about galbanum sitting next to frankincense in Exodus turn a candle into a gift with meaning.
- Tie a sprig of fresh cedar or fir into the ribbon. It echoes the cedarwood in Touch Grass and the cedar in Sunday Reset.
- Add a note about the first burn, so she knows to let the wax melt to the edge of the jar on the first night.
- Hand it over on Christmas Eve, before the service. She can light it the moment she walks back in the door.
The box itself is part of the gift, too. One customer liked ours enough to keep it for the season:
"I love the package and how carefully everything was wrapped. Im saving the wrapping paper to utilize during the xmas holiday."
Jason H.
Questions about frankincense myrrh candles for Christmas
Does MBur make a frankincense and myrrh candle?
No, we do not pour a candle under that name. The closest match in our line is Touch Grass, which carries galbanum, a resin that sits beside frankincense in the incense recipe from Exodus, over amber and cedarwood. Poured in beeswax, it brings back the smell of a candlelit service.
What does frankincense and myrrh actually smell like?
Frankincense smells dry and balsamic, with a lemony edge and a little smoke. Myrrh is warmer and earthier, with a slight bitterness. If she loves that warm, woody depth more than the green resin note, Sunday Reset gets her there through clove, cedar and patchouli.
Which size should I give for Christmas?
Pick the 12 oz size if she will burn it most nights or has a large living room, because its two wooden wicks melt a wide pool and it burns 80+ hours. Pick the 5 oz size, with one wick and 40 hours, for a small apartment or a room she uses a few times a week. For the Christmas Eve host, the 12 oz Touch Grass candle is the right fit.
What if she loves the smell of Christmas baking more than church?
Then give her People Watching. Its notes are Lemon, Orange, Vanilla, Cinnamon, Clove, Nutmeg, Allspice, Ginger, which smells like an orange spice cake cooling on the counter on Christmas morning.
The candle to give this Christmas
The frankincense and myrrh smell she loves comes from resin and beeswax burning together. Touch Grass puts a resin note and a warm wood base into pure beeswax, which is as close as a jar gets to the late service on Christmas Eve.
For the person who hosts the family, give Touch Grass in the 12 oz size. On Christmas Eve, her living room will smell like coming home from church with everyone she loves in one place. The galbanum, amber and cedarwood give her the resin and the wood, and the two wooden wicks fill the room for 80+ hours.
Our customers put it simply: "Everything from this company is amazing." Order this week, so the candle is in your hands in time to wrap it before Christmas Eve.
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