Santa is close

Dressed in red, with a bag full of presents and a visual image "perfected" by the countless Coca-Cola ads,  Santa wears ... sandalwood. One of the strongest image from my childhood is a crystal perfume bottle in a red packaging bearing this name which I could not buy because I had no money - later, the perfume company went bankrupt, no chance to find the old perfume.

What goes very well with the spicy facet of Coca Cola and the color of Santa Claus? The red sandalwood, one of the most precious and sacred ingredients of perfumery. There is not one sandalwood, but many types in India - I am not referring to the sandalwood notes available today in the lab, but to mythology of this amazing ingredient and what can be found in Nature. An old Indian perfume recipe is precisely the modern olfactory image of "coca cola" + sweet sandalwood. Scent images are stronger than a brand and its temporal representation within a commercial product.
There is Maya and Mount Malaya, on the other side of the planet, famous for certain plants, sandalwood and gems. An old indian text cca 800 CE says that Malaya mountain is the birthplace of fine sandalwood trees that are delightful to people, and that are enveloped by cobras from the root-stock, and also the birthplace of nutmeg trees with cubebs, cardamom, and black pepper. Sandalwood are trees infested with snakes, this is the myth.

The best sandalwood perfumes were composed by Ernest Beaux and Guy Robert, but are discontinued. The most exquisite modern examples are Samsara (Guerlain), Santal Majuscule (Serge Lutens) and Santal Blush (Tom Ford) which will be soon followed by another creation I am not allowed to name because it's still    in the lab. It has something Indian which is incredible. 

With sandalwood, the skin becomes divine because the sandalwood molecules with their complicate chemistry are the closest to the mystery of skin (read Scent & Chemistry). Sandalwood molecules like Javanol, Bacdanol and other which are captive, are the "hedione" of the wood - allowing the explosion of the natural ingredient with a mystical force - they are "nanoparticles" of the soul. This is why Nuit de Noel (Caron) contained so much sandalwood in the 1920's original formula.

Santa is surrounded by magical elves and eight flying reindeer. Today he lives at the North Pole, but the original Saint was a Greek Christian bishop of Myra in the Byzantine Anatolia, a city which fell after 808 to Harun al-Rashid caliph (which became famous with Thousand and One Nights tales). Mrr, Myra, myrrhe, mir, miron, the thorn crown made of myrrh tree which continues to produce the miraculous blood when preserved by several Catholic monasteries, etc.... Santa was surrounded by scents since ever. And miracles.

Wrap yourself with the divine red sandalwood and listen Scheherazade (Rimsky-Korsakov, 1888). Good perfumes cross time and space to enchant you.

Santa Claus sells Coca Cola, but he drinks wine - it is a special recipe with eastern spices which comes from the land of Odin today.

In latin, it is Santalum album, but people refer to it as red sandalwood - red and white, the perfect candidate for a SANTA perfume.

Dressed in red like a monk, Santa brings the secrets of perfume - Santal Divine - from a far away land, a drop of golden light of saffron with red sandalwood - a jewel crown.

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Fragrance is the 8th Art - Octavian Coifan - Le Parfum est le 8ème Art