Christmas Citrus Soap

Every year Lush bring out at least one soap that gets forgotten about soon after the season is over. In all honesty, this year there is a selection that I could associate this idea with, despite how nice some of the scents are. Christmas Citrus is one such soap.

While bright in colour, this limited edition is still not the most attractive soap to have been released by the company, for the Christmas period. With the likes of Old Father Time and Angel’s Delight springing to mine immediately, the allure of the fluorescent-like green and yellow colouring doesn’t exactly match up to these aforementioned masterpieces.

With a lemon decoction as a base ingredient, not to mention the name of the product itself, Christmas Citrus is the sweet, fruity citrusy smell that you would expect. Bergamot, lime and lemon juice have also been included in the ingredients, so you can almost imagine what the fragrance of this soap would be like, before even trying it out for yourself. Surprisingly, I found the scent to be far more subtle than I was expecting, and I was almost disappointed that it wasn’t anywhere near as bright and zesty as the design suggested.

From the first sniff, my nose detected a warm, fruity and rather lime-dominated citrusy smell. The lemon intertwined around this to add a warmth that helped to pad the smell out a little. To me, the aroma had an almost chemical-like element to it, which reminded me of scented wet wipes or the smell you sometimes get after you’ve finished cleaning the bathroom. It’s a very clean and refreshing smell, but definitely not one that bowled me over. It’s nowhere near as potent as the likes of Baked Alaska, yet equally not as interesting as Hedgewitch.

The inclusion of both the cocoa butter and  coconut oil meant that Christmas Citrus felt and worked very gently on the skin - creating a gel-like lather that glided easily over the body during the shower. Just like many of the seasonal soaps this year, I found that this one produced a lather more naked Shower Gel would that a regular soap. This meant that my skin felt a little softer and more moisturised after using this across my body.

While there’s nothing in the ingredients list to suggest why this might be, I also found that the soap had an element of exfoliation to it, which I really appreciated. When rubbing it across my body, I found it to be slightly scratchy on my skin - which offered a little buffering without being too coarse of scratchy. 

The scent itself lingered on the skin during use, although I found that it tended to fade dramatically if you used another product alongside it. For this reason, I couldn’t really detect much after I had left the shower. Furthermore, given what Christmas Citrus smells like, I found that I preferred using this as a hand soap as opposed to a full body one. However, this is just down to personal preference and there is definitely no reason why you cannot use it in the latter way.

As with most of Lush’s soaps, this one left me feeling squeaky clean, and the inclusion of the lemon oil meant that there was an element of radiance to my skin afterwards. Despite this, I still needed to apply either a Body Conditioner or a body lotion after using his, as my hands appeared slightly parched if I didn’t do so.

Much like Hidden Mountain, this soap also shrinks rather quickly - which I think is due to the inclusion of the cocoa butter. For this reason, you need to be careful where you store it in between uses, and I would suggest not holding it under the running water for too long, to preserve the chunk for as long as possible.

After using this daily for about two weeks, I came to the conclusion that this soap is simply ‘nice’: it has a nice smell; a pleasant texture; and it’s easy enough to lather it up in the shower. However, there is nothing about this that blows me away enough to want to invest in more than one piece. While there are some products that will be remembered for years to come, I cannot imagine this one being missed if it doesn’t reappear in next year’s line-up.  

Quantitative Ingredients: Propylene Glycol, Lemon Decoction (Citrus Limonum), Water (Aqua), Fair Trade Organic Cocoa Butter (Theobroma cacao), Extra Virgin Coconut Oil (Cocos nucifera), Rapeseed Oil; Coconut Oil (Brassica napus; Cocos nucifera), Organic Castor Oil (Ricinus communis), Sodium Hydroxide, Lime Oil (Citrus aurantifolia), Bergamot Oil (Citrus Aurantium bergamia), Styrax Oil (Liquidambar Styraciflua), Lemon Juice (Citrus limonum), (Citrus Medica Limonum (Lemon) Fruit Juice) Glycerine, Sodium Chloride, Titanium Dioxide, Gardenia Extract (Gardenia jasminoides), Citric Acid, Sodium Stearate, EDTA, Tetrasodium Etidronate, Sodium Bicarbonate, *Cinnamyl Alcohol ,*Limonene, *Linalool, Fragrance, Yellow 8 Blue 1 Yellow 5 Green 8.

Vegan?: Yes.

2017 Price: £4.25 for 100g.

Year Of Original Release: 2017.