# Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh for Kids on Christmas?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [December 18, 2003, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869 "2003-12-18T23:32:30Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MinniePurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/cab0a1/32.png) [@MinniePurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MinniePurl)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2003, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869/1 "2003-12-18T23:32:30Z")

</div>

My husband has decided he wants to get the kids gifts of gold, frankinscence and myrrh for Christmas-- or the modern equivalents. (He’s that oddest of ducks, a Christian Unitarian Universalist, while I’m a more usual (in UU terms) agnostic type. I pointed out that Christmas is really a pre-Christian festival, but heck, being a UU means you can celebrate however you want.) At least for the two older kids (14 and 9), we’ll probably get the 3 year old some more 3 year old type things. We going to have a fairly sparse Christmas, at least in terms of gifts, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. He though that instead of a gift card of some sort, we’d give them $25 each of Sacajawea coins gift wrapped in a box (for non-US Dopers, these are golden colored dollar coins). For the frankincense, we’re kind of at a loss. For the myrrh, he says that myrrh was a resin that was chewed in Biblical times, so he suggests a pack of gum for myrrh. Is that right? And what is the modern eqivalent of frankincense? Maybe just… incense?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cher3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/da6949/32.png) [@cher3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cher3)\
**Post date:** [December 18, 2003, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869/2 "2003-12-18T23:51:39Z")

</div>

You might check out you local health food emporium: Tom’s of Maine makes toothpaste with actual myrrh in it, which might be a good idea if they’re going to to be chewing a lot of gum.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869/3 "2003-12-19T01:28:35Z")

</div>

Well, if you want to go all out and actually do this right;

Find a “Books and Herbs” or Occult store and buy some actual Myrrh. It’s used as an incence. But it doesn’t burn by itself. So you’d need a metal incence burner and some charcoal deals (not BBQ charcoal!) that the store will have.

Smells pretty good. They’re sure to have Frankincense.

Myrrh sells at my local shop for $1.40 per ounce. That’s probably more than enough. So your big expense is really the burner ($10-15) and the charcoal deals ($3 for 10?)

$25 bucks and you can smell these ancient scents in your house a couple of times.

Or for $5, you just buy the stuff and use it in potpouri.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![SnoopyFan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d07c76/32.png) [@SnoopyFan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SnoopyFan)\
**Post date:** [December 19, 2003, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gold-frankincense-and-myrrh-for-kids-on-christmas/219869/4 "2003-12-19T02:19:55Z")

</div>

Myrrh was used to make perfume, too.

Frankincense was plain ole’ incense.