I Missed the Fifth Day of Christmas! Wash My Mouth Out!

Ok - I know washing one's mouth out is the sadistically poetic punishment for cursing, not forgetting things. Believe me - I have endured this punishment. But it is my awkward segue (or Segway, perhaps?) into my 5th/6th/missing Christmas list item.

Dr Bronner's Peppermint Soap. I discovered this soap at my Moksha yoga studio in Halifax. It is the soap they provide in their showers, and it is magic. The peppermint smell is invigorating, and it leaves you feelings tingly clean. I know these sound like the cliches of innumerable body wash ad campaigns. Fuck them - they are liars. I have sampled a variety of soap and body wash products in my 23 (ok, realistically only 17 years...) of washing myself, and I have never used a soap that literally made my skin feel like it was tingling, like I was a Junior Mint. And I love Junior Mints.

So, Moksha yoga studios across the country offer Dr Bronner's Magic Soaps. If you do visit the Dr Bronner website, you will be greeted by, presumably Dr Emanuel Bronner, who resembles every mad scientist and no environmentally conscious soapmaker (unless you're my dad, for whom much environmental science resembles witchcraft), let alone a soapmaker whose growing appeal the website attributes to his "urgent message to realize our transcendent unity across religious and ethnic divides." Right. He actually looks like he would have been buds with Josef Mendele, with his creepy blackout sunglasses which you can only assume is masking a creepy leer and his high collared white lab coat. This is a resemblance that struck me before I read that the family is actually of German-Jewish descent, Emanuel Bronner being a Zionist, and emigrated to the U.S. in 1929. The website does not mention if the move was motivated by the rise of the Third Reich in Germany or not; perhaps that would be just a little bit to heavy an introduction for a soap company, though if you look at the company's timeline, it does reveal that Dr Bronner's parents did in fact meet their demise in the extermination camps.

My bad.

That said - further investigation revealed to me that, while perhaps Dr Bronner's soap, and most certainly the company's story, is new to me, I am certainly not the first to find Dr Bronner a curious entity. There's a documentary about him! The implication, as you will see, is that this man was bat shit crazy.

Anyhow, my horrific nack for sticking my imaginative and hyperbolic foot in my mouth aside, the soap is incredible and comes from a family with generations in the soap making industry. It is USDA certified organic as well as certified Fair Trade. The peppermint variety is the company's most popular variety, perhaps because of the stimulating affects of the peppermint oil (the amazing tingling I mentioned).

Available in a variety of sizes, from the 2oz bottle for $2.49 - a great stocking stuff perhaps? - to a $52.49 1 gallon jug. I am planning on getting some for my mother, to whom I've raved about the soap, however Moksha Yoga Calgary only had a 1 gallon jug left in stock, which they did kindly offered to sell me. I thought, however, that a gallon jug of soap is a somewhat presumptuous and perhaps insulting gift - especially given that I have already purchased her the Keihls avocado eye cream I already recommended. The implication being that after 52 40 something years, my mother is unable to groom herself. Still, I am hoping it goes over well.