Boxing Day, Candy Canes, and a Black-Cherry Mood: My Friday Scent of the Day Ritual

If you’re still nursing a peppermint nap from Candy Cane Day, wake up. It’s Boxing Day, the first day of Kwanzaa, David Sedaris’ birthday, and the perfect excuse to crown a Best of 2025 pick for Friday Scent of the Day. I’m not in the mood for safe. I want a scent with edge. I want the moment the party lights cut and the truth gets told.

Enter Dawn Spencer Hurwitz and her 2025 release, Black Death Cherry. The name made me laugh-snort before I even sprayed it. On skin, it’s a dramatic cherry that refuses to behave like dessert. Think varnished fruit and a faint ink stain. It leans dark without tumbling into cosplay goth, a grown-up cherry with backbone and bite. I swear there’s a shadow of wood and a whisper of smoke, nothing sticky, nothing syrupy, the kind of cherry that makes eye contact and doesn’t blink.

For a Best of 2025 theme, it hits the sweet spot. So many launches aim for consensus. Black Death Cherry feels like a dare. It’s cheeky, slightly macabre, and surprisingly wearable once the initial drama softens into a satin finish. I sprayed it on a wool scarf and it turned plush, as if the cherry glossed the fabric rather than sinking into it. That’s the moment I fell for it.

Friday Scent of the Day is my weekly reset. Yes, it’s a game of what are you wearing, but it’s also an audit of taste, mood, mischief. Some Fridays you do citrus and productivity. Today, I want to honor the liminal space between holidays, when time bends and rules loosen. Dawn Spencer Hurwitz gets that mood. Black Death Cherry smells like a choice, not a compromise.

If your own Best of 2025 leans more peppermint-snap or cozy woods, I get it. But if you need a jolt after too many polite cookies, this glossy-dark cherry is the red lipstick of the season. Happy Boxing Day, happy Kwanzaa, and happy birthday to the beloved curmudgeon David Sedaris. I’ll be over here, wearing Black Death Cherry, tasting the night and taking notes.