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Christmas Spices

© Audrey Stallsmith

And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.
Matthew 2:11

Since this is the time of year when even fast-food fanatics dig out aprons and grandma's recipes, it seems a good time to talk about spices. After all, two of the most exotic appear in the Christmas story itself.

Although we associate frankincense and myrrh with the Child of the New Testament, those resins are actually much more frequently mentioned in the Old. The Ishmeelites, who purchased Old Testament Joseph from his jealous brother, were "bearing spicery and balm and myrrh. . .down to Egypt." And, in Exodus 30, God gave Moses recipes for anointing oil and incense that made frankincense and myrrh prime ingredients.

For the oil, God instructed Moses to mix about 16 pounds of myrrh with the same amount of cassia and half as much each of cinnamon and calamus. For the incense, he was to beat together equal amounts of frankincense, stacte, onycha, and galbanum.

Frankincense (boswellia thurifera), myrrh (commpihora myrrha) and galbanum (ferula galbaniflua) are similar to each other in that they are all trees or shrubby bushes native to Asia and Africa. When slashed, they exude their perfumes as bits of resin called "tears." Frankincense has always been the most esteemed of the three and the most used in worship. To the wise men it could have symbolized Christ's deity, while myrrh, often employed as an embalming spice, may have foretold his early death.

At Christ's crucifixion, the gospel of Mark reports, "they gave him to drink wine mingled with myrrh: but he received it not." And Nicodemus, who came to help prepare Christ's body for burial "brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred pound weight."

Women of ancient times reveled in sweet odors. They painted their eyelids with black kohl, which was actually charred frankincense. The spice burned on braziers along with benzoin and aloeswood. Fragrant resins were sometimes infused into hand creams as well. So when the woman in the Song of Solomon said, "My hands dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh," she may have been speaking literally. These days, myrrh is frequently added to toothpastes and mouthwashes, since its tannins help prevent canker sores and gum disease while its fragrance sweetens the breath.

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