15 Weeks / 107 days until Christmas (Original Christmas Song Battle)

[00:00:02] This is a Bramble Jam Podcast I'm from the North Pole, it's time for Christmas Morning, the daily show where every day is Christmas. Here are your hosts, Brand and...

[00:00:32] Well hello everybody and Merry Christmas, welcome to another episode of Christmas Morning. I'm Brand and I am here per usual with my buddy Scott. Scott, Merry Christmas!

[00:00:43] Merry Christmas, Brandon. Boy am I excited. Oh, I'm real excited, bud. I'm real excited. Well, you didn't ask why I was excited. I mean, I know I'm... Why are you excited? I know I'm excited. Why are you excited? Because I went to Costco and it's full of Christmas and I was like, heck yeah, brother. I'm just taking a gander at the show notes today and I'm real excited. Yeah, let's open up the mailbag because other people have gone to Costco as well. Let's do it. Letters. We get letters. We get stacks and stacks of letters.

[00:01:14] The first email is from Rebecca Porter. Rebecca says, Christmas is in full swing at Costco. My husband went without me and checked it out without taking pics of the Christmas stuff, so I made him go back again, obviously. You gotta. And Rebecca included a whole bunch of great pictures. The one that I really like, Brand, is this... Looks like a birch tree, almost. Yeah. It's very minimalist and I just love it. I'm peeping at that four pack of mugs over there. I don't need more mugs, but...

[00:01:42] I don't remember seeing the mugs or this tree at my Costco. This seems like it's more than what we currently have. Okay, yeah. So there could be various amounts at your local store. If memory serves, last year it was a free-for-all when it came to the Costco. The way that each store just places out what they want to, when they want to. So it's like, I feel like Home Depot, Lowe's, Walmart, they have a system. Costco's like whatever. Yeah, I went and I got to enjoy seeing stuff. Like they had a legit tree. Actually, they had two.

[00:02:13] Well, I mean, I'm looking at this next one. Get to Tony Doc. Oh, yeah. I also have an email from Tony Doc Watson and Tony says, Merry Christmas, Brandon Scott. My sister was in a Costco in Las Vegas today and sent me this picture. Looks like as of the first week of September, Costco is getting pretty Christmassy. I mean, this has trees and then this crazy star thing. Look at that thing. Yeah, there's a massive light-up star. I don't even know what to call this thing. Arch thing.

[00:02:42] I have no idea, but I want it. I can't help but notice the Halloween decor is behind it. Yep. It's like we know what the people want. But in Tony's photo, there are two trees in the foreground. Yeah. And I only saw the one that's on the right. That's a traditional non... The one on the left is flocked. It's a flocker. Incredible stuff. If you enjoy Christmas, and you probably do because you're listening, you should head over to a Costco. Just tail in with somebody if you don't have a cart. It's fine.

[00:03:10] Just look at it. You know what I do sometimes when I don't have my cart is I go in through the out, you know? Yeah, as if you're going to the food court. That's exactly right. Yeah. My Costco has chicken tenders too. I think they all do at this point. They just rolled it out. Yeah. I got to go try them. They're pretty good too. Are they? Well, they're pretty meaty. And for, I don't know, $6 or something, you get five of them. It's pretty good. It's pretty filling. Do they got a good sauce? Yeah. They have something that's almost like a cane sauce. Okay.

[00:03:38] Not bad. Yeah. This is not chicken tender talk. That's our other podcast. I might do it today. I forgot my lunch. And I might just run up for the chicken tenders. So thank you both for these photos. If anyone else wants to send it, please do. I'm enjoying it. I love getting excited with listeners as they write in. Absolutely. I have an email from Mary Pulte. Mary says, Hello. I spent part of my Friday afternoon at Hobby Lobby and here are just a few things that I picked up. We decorate our tree in a whimsical manner.

[00:04:06] So I purchased some picks for the tree along with a small desktop tree to display my mini peanuts ornaments on. And that's a great idea for those little ornaments. I know exactly what Mary's talking about. Mary says, believe me, I could have filled the cart with more, but I was trying to use up a gift card that I had. Yeah, I get that. And Mary sent a picture of her cart and it is full of picks and they're really cute. I like those things. These are fun little, the only way I can qualify it is they're little dinkers. I love these little dinkers. Yeah, dinkers on a stick.

[00:04:36] Yeah. My wife loves the picks on the tree. Dinkers on a stick, brother. I tell you what. And then I have an email from Sean Satka from the Christmas Podcasts podcast, which is an aggregator of Christmas podcasts. Sean says, hey, Brian and Scott, in your latest episode, you talked about eggnog only being out for two to three months at a grocery store here in Wisconsin. They have one brain of eggnog all year round. See the picture. The store is Woodman's and it's really only in Wisconsin and northern Illinois. And he sent a photo of this.

[00:05:05] This is what grocery stores should be doing. Year round eggnog. This is from CF Burger Creamery. Because you know what I want to do? I want to go to the beach in July down a big cup of eggnog. I will say that is a... It looks delicious though. Is that a pint? Is that what you'd call that? No, no. It's a quart. A quart. It's $6.49 for that quart. Yeah. Well, you know, they're not giving away eggnog these days. Not in September, they're not. I tell you what. And then finally, I have an email from Katie.

[00:05:33] This was regarding our announcement last week that you and I are going to be doing an additional bi-weekly show. Sure, yes. And Katie says, my thought on this is yes, yes, yes! Exclamation point. This sounds like so much fun and will bring more joy into the world. We couldn't agree more, Katie. That's why we want to do it. Also, I want to force myself to see the things that I've never seen. I'm trying to expand myself. It'll be good for you. It'll be good because it'll be like the Christmas specials. It'll be some Christmas sitcom episodes.

[00:06:01] All that stuff that TV Scotty talks about every week. And then we're like, what's that? It's going to give us an excuse to find out what that is. And we've talked about having a rotating third chair with people like the Christmas aficionado, Joe Fulton. He's volunteered because obviously he knows that stuff really well. Alonzo, of course. Shannon, Alonzo. Yeah. So we're really looking forward to it. But one of the big outstanding questions is what should we call this thing? So if you have any ideas, write them in. Christmasmorningpodcast at gmail.com.

[00:06:31] We're a little bit stuck on the name. We're a little bit stuck on the name. Yeah. That's right. Because we don't want to pin ourselves into a corner. No. No. Look at Deck the Hallmark. Now you've got Marvel movies. It's hard. It's very difficult. It's where we are a mess. You and I are a mess regardless of name. That's true. I don't have any new reviews, unfortunately, but apparently I have a limerick. Oh, yeah. Why don't you read the limerick this week? This is from listener Jesse Jackson who's written five limericks for us and we're reading them as our countdown to October.

[00:07:01] It's only right that it's five. Yeah. Because of the lines. Each October, they kick off the cheer with a daily Christmas podcast all year. Bran and Scott like to spar on what songs are five star and Scott tells a joke we all hear. Well, I think there was a subtle dig at the end there, but I like it very much, Jesse. Thank you. Speaking of said joke, what do you got? Oh, I got a lousy one. Are you ready? I'm ready. We're back to knock, knock jokes. Okay. Very good.

[00:07:31] Knock, knock. Who's there? Gladys. Gladys who? Gladys Christmas, buddy. Waka waka. Woof. Woof. You know what I saw the other day? You ever get the reels for that other Christmas? It's like Christmas countdown podcast or something like that. I've seen it. Yeah. They did a whole thing about jokes and I'm like, we're the joke guys. Hey. No one else can do Christmas jokes.

[00:07:59] I'm not sure we have the market cornered on Christmas jokes, but. Uh, our website, Christmas morning podcast.com slash jokes begs to differ, Scotty. Yeah. That thing's turned into a pain to keep updated with all of the jokes at this point. No one else can do jokes. That's my understanding. Does anyone else do a countdown? I think they do a countdown. That's the whole point of the show. Oh, crud. 107 days until Christmas.

[00:08:27] You know what I'm realizing, Scotty? We're going to have to do next week. Bran has to be in New Orleans for public radio thing because he's highfalutin. Yeah. Now we can't miss the 100. We, it's literally next Wednesday is 100 days until Christmas. We can't miss that. And we thought about not doing an episode, but because of this, we have to do it. How about this, Bran? If Wednesday doesn't work, we would do the rare Thursday episode. It'll be 99 days. I'm fine with it. It's better than nothing, right? We're going to figure this out.

[00:08:57] We'll figure it out. We'll make sure it happens. Some things are too important. That's only 15 weeks. And the other good news is that it's only 22 days until October 1st. Oh, man. Scotty, have you had a little flirt with fall yet over there in Denver? I'm wearing my hoodies to try to feel cozy. But the other day, I accidentally wore it out of the house and I was like, oh my God, you got to be kidding me here. And I had a really like pit stained shirt underneath it. It was awful. So I didn't want to take it off. And boy, was I sweating, bud.

[00:09:26] It would not have been a trip to have some eggnog. I can tell you that. Yeah. I will say Monday, Labor Day was actually a pleasant day here in Greenville. And it was a pleasant day. I think back home this week, it's in the 80s, like low 80s. And that's a step in the right direction. What I'm really looking forward to is the low 50s and eventually 40s at night. Oh, give me all of it. I've also started watching people camping in blizzards on YouTube. Yeah.

[00:09:55] Because I don't want to go camping myself. I'm an indoor cat. I've been declawed. But I like watching other people do it. Boy, does it look cool. They got the big, they got the sleeping bags. No, no. They got like the big vans. You know, like you'd use as a delivery van and they turn them in. This guy, eight feet of snow in one night. Whoa. Or, you know, like over two days maybe. Was that like over his van? Oh my God, yes. I'll send you a video. How did he get out?

[00:10:22] Well, like he periodically kept going out and shoveling a path. Oh, he was. You can't just fall asleep and hope for the best. You'll find you in spring if you do that. I hear eight feet of snow coming. I'm like, well, I guess that's that. I had a good run. Nothing I can do about that. Let's do this. Let's do it. Today is September 9th, 2026.

[00:10:52] Here's the news. Scotty, we have our first Christmas movie lineup released. Up TV. This is why fall is the best. That's right. Up TV. First to draw their weapon here when it comes to the schedules. First to the duel. They have released their schedule for the holiday season. Eight original Christmas movies starting the first weekend in November,

[00:11:19] which I think is on par for last year. So that's like one a week, right? Between November and Christmas. Yeah. And then they ended up adding two more during the season. Oh, they just found them on the floor? As someone who watched those two movies, I wish they hadn't. Yeah, they literally found them on the floor, the cutting room floor. Yeah, really tough. Really tough. But I'll give you a brief rundown really quick. They're kicking things off. Actually, are they doing only? So it's. Yeah, I don't know what they're doing here.

[00:11:47] They're doing Thursday and Friday night releases, which is interesting, I guess, to try to not compete directly with Hallmark's big Saturday and Sunday movies. I don't know. But kicking things off on Thursday, November 5th. It's. Firth? Oh, November 1st. Man, that's a great time to launch a movie. November 5th. I don't recognize any of these people, but the movie is called Snowbody Like You. I like that title.

[00:12:14] We should do a ranking episode of just titles. Yeah, we'll put it in our new show, okay? Trying to find the best title. And then the following night, Chocolate for Christmas. That's a fun one. November 6th. We do get a royal movie, everybody. They're always good for one of them. A Royal Stables Christmas on November 12th. And then Christmas in points. But it's E-N for N. I don't. Oh, on point.

[00:12:45] On point. On point. Yeah, on point. On point. On point. Christmas on point. I don't know. So that's starring Jonathan Stoddard, who I recognize from Hallmark Movies. A weird thing they're doing is a Thanksgiving marathon of what you're asking? What Christmas related thing? The Rookie. The Cop Procedural. Procedural. The Cop TV show. The Rookie. Is that Christmas? No. Okay. Not at all. I don't know why they're doing that.

[00:13:15] They've got Nazneen Contractor, who has been in a lot of Hallmark movies. She's doing a movie for Up this year. The Christmas Gift Guide. The Christmas Ballroom. The one I'm excited about, Vivica A. Fox. She did a Christmas movie last year for Up, and she was in it for all of two seconds. She's doing another one of those. You picked the wrong stocking. Christmas Cookie Caper. Oh. A Puzzle Time Mystery. So, which is a sequel to last year's A Christmas Murder Mystery that she was in.

[00:13:45] And so, looking forward to that. Their last Christmas movie will air on December 17th, which is The Christmas Treehouse. All right. So, there you go. First batch of Christmas movies. Who covers the Up TV movies on DTH? Ryan Popola drew the short straw, so he gets to do it. Oh, I love Ryan. He'll bring a great spin to it. I'm looking forward to it. I sent him the schedule, and I said, you still in? And he said, you bet I am. All right.

[00:14:14] Doggy go home or whatever he likes. Doggy go home. That's exactly right. All right. Let's take a break. We'll come back. We will get to the Christmas TV Minute and today's original Christmas music battle here on Christmas Morning. Welcome back, everybody. We were just talking about Christmas movies. It's got me in the spirit to watch a little TV. And there's one guy that I know that has the full rundown on what we can expect to see is Stevie Scotty. Hi, Stevie Scotty. Hello, Brandon.

[00:14:42] I did my normal thing, so I go to MostlyChristmas.com. I copy and paste. I find the ones I like, and then I edit out the ones that we see all the time. And I think I had a little bit of a heavy hand on the editing this week. We are going to be well under a minute. Oh, no! We only have like 10 listings here. But you know what? It's what we have to do. That's what the people want. That's what the people want. I don't think I have a little background music thing that short, though. That's going to be a little tricky. So I'll have to figure this out later.

[00:15:12] A little editing job. You're going to be a little music producer this week. Yeah, but typically what I do is I figure out the length of it, and then I find, you know, I have a folder full of songs, and I find the one of the right length, and I drop it in, and I, you know, tweak it so it's perfect. I don't think it's going to happen this week. We'll find out. Just play the music over top of us explaining the music, and we'll get to the right length. Oh, there you go. Yeah, yeah. We spent way longer talking about this than we are going to be for the listings. So here is your Christmas TV Minute, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com.

[00:15:39] Wednesday, 4 p.m. on Cozy, Married with Children, God Help Ye, Mary Bundyman. And 7 p.m. on Rewind, 227, Mary's Christmas. Thursday, 1.30 a.m. on Rewind, Murphy Brown, I'm Dreaming of a Brown Christmas. And 10 a.m. on E, NCIS Los Angeles, Free Ride. Friday, 6 p.m. on Hallmark Family, Christmas Scavenger Hunt. It's a Christmas scavenger hunt. 6 p.m. on Hallmark, A Biltmore Christmas. 8 p.m. on Hallmark Family, A Song for Christmas from 2017.

[00:16:09] And 8 p.m. on Hallmark, Rocky Mountain Christmas from 2017, the OG. That's right. At least the first one I ever heard for Deck the Hallmark. That's the first one. And then finally, 9 a.m. on Ovation, Murdoch Mysteries, The Night Before Christmas. And 7 p.m. on MeTV+, SWAT, Silent Night, Deadly Night. And that was your Christmas TV Minute, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com. There you go. All right. Let's get to the Christmas music battle results from last week, which was Joy to the Worlds.

[00:16:38] Let's see if I can take a commanding lead or things get a little tighter. Let's find out. Spoiler alert. But it's getting tighter, folks, because I'm in last place. Joy to the World by Tim Bray. I like that one, Bran. I did, too. I brought it. Yeah, but 18% of the vote. If you're under 10, you've really pulled a stinker. 20%, you're doing okay. I'm doing okay. All right. Thank you. That was encouraging. Yeah.

[00:17:07] Second place, 28.8% of the vote. Joy to the World by The Scotronauts featuring Lorraine, which was brought by... Jack Unverford. Listeners. Yes. Jack. And you said The Scotronauts. That's my band. It's The Scotronauts. Oh, my gosh. How could I mess that up? Unbelievable. But that means in first place, we have Joy to the World by Jimmy Z. Heavy on the harmonica brand, but 52.5% of the people thought this was a pretty good song.

[00:17:36] Can't argue with that, which means you and I are once again tied up, Scott. This is intense. What is it? Like 11 to 11 or 10 to 10? It is 11 to 11 to 8. So technically, the listeners are not out of it yet. Yeah. We still have like eight more episodes or seven more episodes or something. Something like that. Yeah. Yeah. They could still pull it off. In fact, I'm really pulling for the listeners because I'd like to see a three-way tie. Oh, that'd be fun. Wouldn't that be cool?

[00:18:04] Because, I mean, there's no prizes, so whatever. We'll get a fanny pack. 100%. Oh, you have the market cornered on fanny packs. I'll give them a who, what, when fanny packs. How about that? Brought to you by the ETV Endowment of South Carolina. That's exactly right. That's exactly right. All right. Let's get to this week's battle of original Christmas songs. Always a bit of a journey to find these. It is quite the journey. Sometimes it's worth it. Sometimes it's not. It depends really on what mood you're in, where you're looking for the song.

[00:18:32] If Bandcamp would just allow us to sort by date, I think it would be a lot easier because you have to keep poking through. And at this point, I've looked at a lot of original Christmas songs. I'd like to find just the 2026 releases. Sure. Yeah. That makes sense. Let's get to the first one. This is Santa Says Relax by Joe Enns and The Cavalcade.

[00:18:59] I was in Westfield regretting the fact days before Christmas I had a panic attack. What should I get of the who and how much and what for? And I think the jumper I bought for my brother-in-law is a little too late, my God. I'm going to throw myself under a bus. But then I hear a brass band play.

[00:19:43] Don't have some old one. I like that, Brian. That was a fun little one. I wonder if they're British. Hmm. I don't know. Cavalcade? Sounded British. Is that a British word? Sounded British. We don't use cavalcade enough in English. No. We really should. Absolutely. Up next, we have So Christmas, original version by Christmas Crackers.

[00:20:13] Guess who's back in the gingerbread house? You better not cry. You better not pout. Got my tree down right with red and white lights. Cause I'm lighting this bitch up bright tonight. And I wrap my guests with exacting precision. Back to back, all my folks stream on my television. Red and green clothes on the couch. Fresh the big cookies from my mouth.

[00:20:47] That's Christmas quite like me, buddy the elf. Who's he? I love the music, the food, the wreaths, the snow, the movies, the parties, the ho-ho-hos. I love the drinks, the sweaters, the reds, the greens. So many lights on my house, it's almost obscene. I guess you could say I'm the Yuletide Queen. My Christmas spirit is extreme.

[00:21:18] You know what that reminds me of, Bran, is very early 80s hip-hop. Now, you weren't alive. And this is the kind of stuff we listen to in fourth and fifth grade. Sure. Kind of fun. I don't know. What are people going to think of that? What do they mean by original version? I have no idea. I want to hear the new version. All right. Last. Christmas may have to be postponed. Pwned? Oh, no. By Carly Jameson.

[00:21:46] My Santa suit already and my sleigh is set to go.

[00:22:40] Oh, I like her voice, Bran. I like that. I like a little. What is that? The eight-bar blues or whatever, basically? Yeah, 12-bar blues. It was good. However many bars. So we have three very different versions today. There's a taste for everyone. Someone's going to find what they like. Absolutely. And we got a ton of listener submissions this week. We got submissions from Mary Pulte, Jeff Dale, Michelle Byerly, Brad Adams, Lance Garman,

[00:23:05] Jen Hornacek, Kim Gazorek, John Rice, Randy Franklin, and Drew Basic. Thank you all for submitting. What should we do next week, Bran? That's the big question. We got an additional backlog item sent to us from our friend Tony Dixon, who said, you haven't played Santa Bring My Baby Back. Santa Bring My Baby Back to me. And I checked Bandcamp and there were at least a few pages of results there. I like that. I like that. Let's do that. Santa Bring My Baby Back. I'm always thinking about the Elvis version, Bran. Is that the popular one?

[00:23:35] I think it was the first originally done by Elvis. Yes. I don't know if it was originally done, but it was probably written by somebody else. But go to, anyway, find a version you like. Email to me at christmasmorningpodcast at gmail.com. That's going to be fun. And we have never battled that one. No. Period. No. I searched the page and nary a version called that. Very good. I can't wait to see what Bandcamp has in store for us with that.

[00:24:04] And that'll do it for this week's episode. Next week's a big one. So come on back for that. Yeah. We're going to figure out what the heck we're going to do. If we're a day late, you'll know why. We're not going to miss it, folks. We promise. We won't miss it. We won't miss it. All right. Come on back next week for another one. Until then. Merry Christmas.

[00:24:32] You're about to hear some ads that help pay for our trip back and forth to the North Pole. Feel free to listen. Feel free to bail now. But either way, thanks for being here. Ho, ho, ho. Ho, ho, ho.