This holiday season it’s nice to have some smells to remind us of the holiday spirit! From cranberry to chocolate and cinnamon with pine. So here are my rankings of the 2025 season out of 10.
Lets start at my lowest ranking of a 5/10 Frosted Cranberry. The frosted cranberry was a strange one, it has notes of iced cranberries, blonde woods, red apple and tonka bean. This is a lie, it smells like if you took cranberries and crushed them up and sprayed them with apple air freshener. But if you are a cranberry fan I guess it would be a good option for you but there’s definitely better.
Fresh Balsam is standing at a solid 6/10. It smelled exactly like a Christmas tree, with slight hints of freshness such as mint and flannel. It reminded me of getting a Christmas tree and setting it up at home in brand new Christmas jammies. The reason for my low ranking is the lack of scent it had, it was rather bland and I couldn’t really make a lot out of it until four sniffs.
At a lovely 7.5/10 we have Bright Christmas Morning. Bright Christmas morning is said to have notes of ripe red berries, blood orange and crisp apple. If I’m being honest it isn’t very Christmas as much as it is fruit punch. When I first smelled it, it smelled wonderful, super yummy and fruity. But when I burned the candle it made my room smell like Hawaiian punch. So unless your idea of Christmas is fruit punch I wouldn’t recommend.
Now onto my assortment of 8.5’s because no one’s perfect and that goes for candles too.
The first star of the 8.5’s is Cinnamon Caramel Swirl. It contains notes of gooey caramel, grated cinnamon, vanilla bean and brown sugar. It personally reminded me of a churro, the kind you get at a restaurant after filling yourself with food. It’s only a solid 8.5 because when you burn it, its original smell loses some of its sweetness and is a bit overwhelming.
The next 8.5 and really the shining star of it is Vanilla Buttermilk. This is a newer scent in the collection, and is one of my favorite vanilla scents that they have. It has notes of cooling buttermilk, comforting vanilla and soft sugar. To me it takes the cake over vanilla bean noel everyone’s favorite vanilla scent to glaze. But it’s time to expand our horizons to a new vanilla scent and this is my pick!
Following that is genuinely the best chocolate scent they’ve released Hot Cocoa and Cream also at an 8.5. It has notes of decadent milk chocolate, fresh steamed milk and mini marshmallows. Now the reason for the lower ranking is because the chocolate is so overwhelming the other notes are pretty much non-existent. But as a stand alone chocolate scented candle it is wonderful!
Our final 8.5 on the list is Cinnamon Sugared Pecans, honestly super underrated scent. It has notes of toasted pecans, cinnamon and brown sugar. The fact that you can actually smell the pecans and not be overwhelmed by the cinnamon and brown sugar is amazing! It’s rare to get a nutty scent like this, everything else is dominated by berry like scents or cinnamon. So it’s a good attention to the variety and genuinely is one of my favorites in the collection this year.
Now our number 9 and my personal favorite Twisted Peppermint! I’ve smelled a lot of peppermint like scents, a lot are too sweet, others are just bland and all you get is mint and wax. But this, this is THE peppermint scent. It actually smells like peppermint candy cane. Sweet enough to bring out that sugary scent but still very minty. It’s also not overwhelmingly minty still dull enough for it to not smell like a dentist office.
Thank you for staying with me and make sure to check out these holiday smells! You can find all of them at https://www.bathandbodyworks.com to warm up your home with these sweet smells! Except for Frosted Cranberry. I don’t wish that on anyone.
