Mintally Challenged

Christmas is the season of mint. Think candy canes, peppermint bark, mint hot cocoa, mint scented lotions and mint scented air fresheners. This to me is both bizarre and unfortunate. Mint is an herb, the same as bee balm and basil and dill. There is nothing inherently Christmas-y about it. As far as I can learn, candy makers began adding mint flavoring to candy canes some time around the 1900s. If they had added oregano instead, would we be as obsessed with oregano scented lotions and oregano bark? Was that the beginning of our modern mint mania? I don’t know, but prior to that, I suppose the Christmas season was blissfully mint-free.

In case you haven’t picked up on this by now, I hate mint. Passionately.

I am an oddity, I know. A freak of nature. Everyone else loves mint. I gave homemade peppermint bark to friends as a Christmas gift one year (believe me, that was one recipe for which I had no desire to lick the spoon) and everyone raved about how wonderful it was and how much they love peppermint bark.

Yech.

My distaste for mint dates back to my childhood. Mint makes me repeatedly sneeze in size and force equivalent to multiple nuclear bombs detonating, and every morning at 7:59 a.m. you could find me in the bathroom pressing that little red button. I’d just finished brushing my teeth before going to school, of course. Toothpaste only came in mint flavor when I was a child.

No wonder I hated brushing my teeth.

This strange reaction extended to breath mints as well, and weirdly enough some medicines, like Nyquil and Peptobismal. There were two good sides to this talent of mine that I have to admit. It made faking an illness easier, and it made a great party trick.

The perks end there, though.

Part of me wishes things were different. I look at all those brightly colored candy canes, and I become a little wistful. There are lots of candy cane flavors now that I could enjoy instead, but somehow it just seems wrong to enjoy a strawberry flavored candy cane during Christmas.

Every season, I always receive some mint product from a loved one who forgets my quirk. Last year it was a mint body scrub. And every time this happens I smile politely and thank them profusely, but the whole time I'm mentally raising my fist to heaven and crying out:

“Curse you dead candy cane inventors!”