Candle Day – December 3, 2024

History of Candle Day

Every year since the day’s 2013 inception, candle lovers across the nation gather on the first Saturday of December to take advantage of Bath & Body Works’ annual candle sale. Three wick candles that usually retail for around $25 will only be $9.50. Some locations will extend their operating hours so that they open earlier and close later, giving their customers ample time to go to the store and sniff out their favorite candles.

From the earliest of times, candle makers added scents to produce the best smelling candles. It started in China with their candle “time clocks”. Incense sticks were often inserted into the wax to add relaxing aromas. Sometimes incense was placed sporadically throughout the candle so that the scent was constantly changing. In the 1980s and 1990s, a rebirth in candle popularity became an international phenomenon, This was due partly to their decorative value, but also their ability to allow the stressed out, modern, over-worked homeowner an opportunity to create a relaxing environment using the aromatherapy of scented candles.

Bath & Body Works, an American retailer under the L Brands umbrella, was founded in 1990 in New Albany, Ohio. The company’s first store opened in a Cambridge, Massachusetts mall in September 1990. In 1997, a secondary brand called Bath & Body Works at Home was launched. Soon it was renamed to Slatkin before settling on the name we know it as today, White Barn Candle Company. The company launched a seasonal catalog, a website, and launched its first television commercial advertisement in 2006. Net sales as of January 28, 2006, were $2.3 billion, significantly higher than all other L Brand companies other than Victoria’s Secret.