Santa's Christmas Naked Shower Cream

While I love whenever Lush bring out a new product, this year's seasonal range has given me a whole of work to do - given that nearly every liquid product has been released as a solid edition as well. Although the reason behind this move is one that I support wholeheartedly, I cannot imagine my flat mates will be best pleased that I currently take twice as long in the shower, just so I can demo both versions at the same time. 

Santa's Christmas is one of the first Solid Shower Creams that I ever experienced, so I had no idea what to expect from the bottle-shaped, soap-look-a-like that joined me in the shower one early September morning. While a part of me was excited at the prospect of a solid shower cream, I held slight reservations that it was going to be little more than a soap under a different guise. How wrong could I be?

Firstly, I need to make it clear that not one of Lush's solid shower gels/creams can be compared to a bar of soap. Whereas soaps dry my skin out and leave my hands with a distinctive parched feel about them afterwards, not one of these limited editions has that effect. These exclusives are a different ball game altogether, and it only took me a matter of seconds to realise this in the shower.

Despite my intrigue into how the product worked, I was slightly less enthused by the fragrance of Santa's Christmas. At the risk of repeating myself, I should state that the scent of this product is not in anyway bad at all. However, it's a smell that I would describe as being both nice or pleasant: two adjectives that doesn't exactly inspire the fireworks to ignite. 

A new addition to the company's growing collection of Shower creams, Santa's Christmas is a sweet and creamy fruity concoction of ingredients - as warming as the vibrant shade of red that both the solid and its liquid counterpart sport. While neither editions will stain you or your bathroom, I would recommend that you play it safe with any splashes that may occur during your shower.

With as many ingredients as the liquid version, you would expect the solid cream to offer a strong, complex aroma to contend with. However, I found that the fragrance was disappointingly mild overall, and many of the ingredients didn't make an appearance at all. Featuring cinnamon, black pepper, aniseed and lime oils, as well as fresh orange juice, a coffee infusion and benzin resinoid, Santa's Christmas sounds like a powerhouse of ingredients. Having said that, it is only really the lime, orange and benzin resinoid.

While each of these don't impact the scent of this very much, they each have an important role that helps to make this seasonal special both moisturising and slightly clarifying on the skin as well. From the bottle, you can first smell the lime, orange and benzin resinoid. As many have said before me, this shower gel smells like slightly flat vanilla cola: it's both creamy and fruity, and it's perhaps slightly surprising that there isn't any tonka or vanilla absolute present in the ingredients list, to suggest the sweetness.

There is a very subtle shout out to the cinnamon infusion, but I feel as if it's only really noticeable because you're aware that it features in the ingredients list to begin with. I couldn't detect either the aniseed oil or the coffee infusion at all. Having said that, my skin did feel crisp and refreshed after using this, and I believe it is the latter ingredient that helps to clarify the skin and bring out that radiance and that vibrancy. 

Unlike other shower creams, this one is quite possibly the most difficult to extract from the bottle. It is almost as thick as one of Lush's buttercreams, and so when trying to remove it from the bottle it took a lot of effort to do so. Frustrated by this, I ended up removing the black lid altogether and squeezing it out through the neck of the bottle itself. 

As I was expecting, it wasn't particularly generous when lathering up, and I found that I had to use more than a regular gel to clean my whole body. Furthermore, the cream did have a red tinge to it that worried me a little to begin with, as I was expecting to find splashes of colour on my skin after I had rinsed the lather away. Luckily, there was no staining afterwards, although I did find that my sponge was slightly tarnished by the colour.

Having said that, Santa's Christmas did prove to be just as moisturising as you'd expect a shower cream to be, and this makes it a great winter product to help keep the skin in tip-top condition in the harsher conditions. In

When in comparison with the solid edition, I found that this version had a better fragrance - in that the fruitiness and the vanilla-like notes were more pronounced and more noticeable. In the shower, this version offered a stronger smell overall and I could still detect this on my skin over an hour after I had towelled myself down. 

Both editions were equally moisturising and I was impressed by how soft and smooth my skin felt after using each of them. However, I found that the solid edition was easier to use as it produced more of a foam-like lather, so I was able to use less overall and make the product last longer than the bottled version.

Overall, I'll be honest and say that I would have probably rated this shower cream higher if the scent had impressed me more than it did. Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely smell, but not one with the complexity of originality that I would expect from a Lush fragrance. Having said this, I can envisage that this will be very popular product this Christmas, and it wouldn't surprise me if it made an appearance next year as well.

Quantitative Ingredients: Sodium Laureth Sulfate, Propylene Glycol, Sodium Cocoamphoacetate, Cinnamon Infusion, Coffee Infusion, Sodium Stearate, Lauryl Betaine, Perfume, Almond Oil, Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter, Lime Oil, Aniseed Oil, Black Pepper Oil, Benzoin Resinoid, Fresh Lime Juice, Fresh Orange Juice, Titanium Dioxide, *Citral, *Limonene, Colour 16035, Colour 73360, Black Specerit Wax.

Vegan?: Yes.

2017 Price: £10.75 each.

Year Of Original Release: 2017.

Scent Family:
Santa Baby Lip Tint
Santa Baby Naked Lip Tint
Santa's Christmas Naked Shower Cream

Santa's Christmas Shower Cream