18 Weeks / 128 days until Christmas ("It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like 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, ho ho ho and Merry Christmas! Welcome to Christmas Morning, your favorite Christmas morning show. I am Brand and I am here per usual with my co-host Scotty.

[00:00:44] Scotty, Merry Christmas to you, pal. Merry Christmas to you, Brandon. I have breaking news for you. You have breaking news? Yes. Okay. Our good friend and listener Tony Dixon sent me a picture of the top stock at Lowe's and I just forwarded it to you. There are some tree boxes up at his Lowe's. I'm gonna have to check out mine. Yeah, those are definitely, those are definitely trees. I like that. Scotty, do you ever look at the calendar and go, what are we doing here? Sure, but what specifically are you thinking today?

[00:01:14] I don't know, sometimes, like today it's August 19th and it's like, we are a really interesting group of people talking about Christmas on August 19th. Yeah, I get that a lot from people. But you know what? I wouldn't have it any other way, brother. We had some contractors over to the house because my office is just a sitting disaster.

[00:01:34] Okay. And I want some built-in cabinets and countertops and such. And both of them said to my wife, who's lovely and takes care of all this for me, said, huh, that's a full-size Christmas tree. Well, yeah. Yeah, it is. Okay. Exactly. And Christmas trees are paying for this thing. So come on, folks. You don't realize that it's weird until other people point it out and you're like, ah.

[00:01:58] You know what though? I'm beyond caring. I just, I do it for me and for our lovely listeners who I just think are so great. And we're not alone, Scotty. We're not alone. We've got people that are listening all year long, every single week, and they send in stuff and that mailbag, it just keeps growing. It just keeps growing. We're never going to see the bottom again, I'm sure. Letters. We get letters. We get stacks and stacks of letters.

[00:02:23] The first email today is from Melanie Marie, and this was sent about the 19th of July. So I'm one month behind on it. All right. Okay. We'll take it. I mean, I don't know if behind is the right word. We're running about a month out right now on emails. We're a month out. We're a month out. Melanie says, I got to go to Virginia this past week and had the chance to go to Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Colonial Williamsburg.

[00:02:47] And I've been to both of those. It's been 30, 35 years since I've been to Busch Gardens Williamsburg. Sure. But the photos that she sent took me right back. I'm pretty sure this is how it was when I was there. Oh, I'm sure they have not changed a thing. She said, Busch Gardens has this gorgeous year-round Christmas store in their Germany section with lots of ornaments and decor. My favorite thing is in the corner to the right. It was a restored vintage Porter music box that uses metal discs.

[00:03:16] It was playing the Act 1 March song from the Nutcracker Ballet while I walked through the store and it gave me such good feels. Down the hall, there was a wall of nutcrackers. Over in Colonial Williamsburg, I found this interesting Santa statue in the Museum of Art. I didn't get a picture, but the visitor center had a decent Christmas section with soaps, candles, and ornaments. They had individual ornaments of the founding fathers and I couldn't resist taking home a little Alexander Hamilton. And she included photos that I put on our Instagram.

[00:03:44] First, I love this Busch Gardens store here. I'm not going to pay a full price ticket just to go to this, but I sure would love to. I like that it's like the entrance makes it feels like you're going into something special. Yeah, what are you seeing here? I'm seeing a bishop and maybe a wise guy? A wise guy, that's exactly right. I don't know if it's one of the three wise men, so I'm just going to call him a wise guy. And there's just a nice archway with a thing over top that just says Christmas, and you go in and you're transported.

[00:04:14] I like it. I kind of wish that they did a little bit more with the ceiling. Like, I wish there was a lot of Christmas lights on the ceiling. Yeah, it could be darker, right? Yeah, I don't know. But I really like the vibe going in at the very least. Yeah, is this the right time to announce our new job as the official decor masters of Busch Gardens Williamsburg? If theme parks want to contact us, we'll just give our thumbs up or our thumbs down. All you got to do is fly me out and give me a ticket, too. You don't have to pay me anything.

[00:04:44] I come cheap. We'll thumbs up it. Yeah, we'll thumbs up it. And then there's the photo of the Santa Claus, what do you call this thing? Statue? Yeah, something like that. What is that? Well, what's interesting here is behind it, I think there's something that has an arrow. But to me, it looks like an old, who is the comedian that did the arrow? Yeah, I know what you're talking about. He wore the headband that looked like the arrow threw it. That's what I'm seeing here. So go to our Instagram and check it out. Thank you, Melanie. I love it.

[00:05:13] Very funny. Thank you, Melanie. I've got an email from Simon in South Africa. Simon says, how's it? How's it? We are currently right in the middle of our citrus harvesting season here, busy packing and shipping fruit out to international markets, including the United States. Well, first of all, that's really cool. I didn't know you did that, Simon. Yeah. As part of my route I drive, I regularly stop by our citrus harvest warehouse where I get to watch trucks loading up. One of my favorite parts is seeing the unique nameplates the truck drivers give to their trucks and homes on wheels.

[00:05:43] During a recent stop, I spotted a fantastic Christmas-themed truck nameplate, and I knew I just had to share a photo of it with you guys. Keep the podcast lecker, as always, and hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead from Simon in sunny winter South Africa. Lecker. Lecker. Yeah, this is a Grinch-inspired license plate. How about that? I don't think it's like a license plate like it would be used for road purposes, but it looks like they customize it.

[00:06:12] And, you know, I would call mine a truckie McTruck face, but this driver, much, much better. It says Grinch, and I love it. Very cool. Thank you for sharing, Simon. How's it to you? What's the proper antithesis to how's it? Like, what's the goodbye? Goodbye is it? You gotta let me know. Goodbye is it. I have an email from David Scarborough. David says, we went to a local farmer's market and a vendor there had a table with boutique Christmas treats. The sourdough with green Christmas trees was amazing, although the picture is blurry.

[00:06:41] Here's a picture of her table. How about that? And I included this because David's right here. This is a good way to get some sneaky little Christmas in. You can almost always find one little Christmas type item at a craft fair or farmer's market. How about that? Christmas sourdough. Yeah. So you should. I'll take that. You should frequent Lay Dishes Bakery and Catering somewhere in Texas. They've been doing this since 2023, and I'm sure they're doing the Lord's work. Absolutely.

[00:07:10] And that's what I've got today, Brian. Very good. I got nothing over on the reviews department, Scotty. So back to you for jokes. Well, that's okay because we go a little long in these mailbag sections trying to get through the backlog. So as soon as we're through all this mail, we're going to get annoying about the reviews again. Oh, I bet we are. I do have a Christmas knock-knock joke for you. I'm ready. Oh, we're back to knock-knocks. I knew you were excited about that. Let's do it. All right. Knock-knock. Who's there? Wayne. Oh, Wayne who?

[00:07:39] Oh, Wayne in a manger. Saw it coming. I like that though. That's fun. Yeah. Because you get to include the uh part. Otherwise, it doesn't really work. Wayne. Yeah. Very nice. All right. Let's do the countdown. 128 days until Christmas. All right. Okay. This one hit me.

[00:08:05] This one hit me in a way that just said, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're really getting there. Because it's felt like 150 for a while and sometimes we feel stuck at those numbers. That's right. But I looked at it and like, whoa, 128. That's like four weeks from now we're going to be hitting the 100-day mark. And that's 18 weeks. I know. I was going to say, I think that the takeaway here is that we are less than a month away from the 100 mark. And that's going to be a big one.

[00:08:34] Not even curmudgeons like Dan can argue with that one. No. Absolutely not. Absolutely not. And also good news. It's only 43 days until October 1st. How about that? Charge. That's only six weeks. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. Let's do the news, Scotty. Yeah. Let's do it. I'm really excited about this. Today is August 19th, 2026. And here's the news.

[00:09:04] Well, well, well. Well, congratulations to one Vince Giraldi. You've done it. You've done it. Posthumously. Yes, of course. Yeah. A Charlie Brown Christmas just went sextuple platinum. Am I saying that right? Well, I wasn't sure where you were going with that there. But Charlie Brown Christmas just went sextuple platinum. Sextuple. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:09:31] Six million units of sales for that album, making it the best selling jazz album of all time, officially surpassing one Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. Tough break for Miles, but good for us Christmas lovers. And this is amazing, right? Obviously incredible. Yeah. We love this.

[00:09:56] My top three would include both the Vince Giraldi Peanuts album and Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. I love both of those albums. So they can duke it out all they want. And I'm still a happy boy. Yes. It is good. It is good. You're in good company, I think, if you are. Yeah. In good company. Exactly. But this also comes when the yearly announcement of the Charlie Brown Christmas vinyl pressings comes out.

[00:10:23] Every year they do some crazy vinyl pressings. And I'm always like, man, that's really cool. Even though I already have my own cool. I have two copies of this already, but our friend Alonzo gets excited about this too. But the pressing this year that caught my eye, it is going to cost you $150. See? Because it is a liquid filled vinyl with snowflakes in it, Scotty. What?

[00:10:53] You got to see a picture of this thing. It is truly, I've never seen anything like it. It is unbelievable. Unbelievable. And also, it's limited edition. Only 300 of them in existence. And so, like, when it's moving, apparently the liquid also moves inside of the pressing. This reminds me of those shoes from the disco shoes from the 70s that had the goldfish in them. Yeah. How about that?

[00:11:23] Same thing, pretty much. Crazy. I don't even really know what to do with this, but it is out there if you want to snag it. I believe it's still available. It looks amazing. And I'm not asking our listeners to buy me this because I feel like that's gross. But if one showed up at my house, I would be doing backflips. But please don't. That's too expensive. $150. Yeah. It's so cool, though. I've never heard of a... Do you have this one on? Do you have this on vinyl?

[00:11:50] I have the Charlie Brown Christmas, but I obviously don't have any kind of liquid filled ones. No, I have it. I believe mine is a green vinyl, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, that's what I have as well. Like, I was like, this is... Yeah, I was like, this is awesome. But every year they do like some sort of special pressing. And this is really... This is next level. Very cool. This is a wild one. Too rich for my blood, but what a cool story. Very cool. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll get to the Christmas TV Minute.

[00:12:16] And today's Christmas music battle of it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas here on Christmas Morning. Hi, everybody. Welcome back. It is time for today's Christmas TV Minute with TV Scotty, where he gives us the rundown of a few things that you can watch on the TV. Perhaps set your DVR that will get you in the Christmas spirit. Hi, TV Scotty. Hello, Brandon. And I'm starting to get to the point where I'm going through these and I'm like, oh, should I pick this one?

[00:12:45] Or should I pick this one? Because we really are trying to keep it close to a minute. This is not everybody's favorite section. And we've heard, I don't need to hear living single, living kringle. I get it. But I was really stressing about it. So I hope I did what you think is a good job. I have no doubt, Scotty. All right. So here is your Christmas TV Minute, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com. Wednesday, 2 p.m. on Antenna. Alice, Mel's Christmas Carol. And 10 p.m. on GetTV, House, Merry Little Christmas.

[00:13:13] Thursday, 10 a.m. on Cozy, Hanging with Mr. Cooper, Christmas show. Nice. And 10 p.m. on Pop, NCIS, You Better Watch Out. Friday, 6 a.m. on Cozy, Highway to Heaven, Another Song for Christmas. 6 p.m. on Hallmark Family, Entertaining Christmas. 6 p.m. on Cozy, Married with Children, The Worst Noel. 8 p.m. on Hallmark Family, The Christmas Shepherd from back in 2014. Oh, wow. And 8 p.m. on Hallmark, Single on the 25th from last year. Saturday, 1 a.m. on Freeform, According to Jim, The Gift of the Maggie.

[00:13:42] 6 a.m. on Pop, NCIS, North Pole. 2 p.m. on MeTV, Bonanza, A Christmas Story. 4 p.m. on MeTV Plus, Bob, A Christmas Story. That's two things in a row named A Christmas Story. Wow. Not the same thing. How about that? Yeah, would have been good for our original Christmas music battle without original names kind of idea. And 6 p.m. on Rewind, My Two Dads, Tis the Season. Sunday, 8 a.m. on Hallmark Family, Little House on the Prairie. Low House on the Prairie. Low House.

[00:14:11] Bless all the dear children. 10 p.m. on Antenna, Too Close for Comfort, Mr. Christmas. 12 p.m. on Fee TV, Brawhide, 25 Santa Clauses. At 11 p.m. on Hallmark Mysteries, Murder, She Wrote, A Christmas Secret. Finally, Monday, 12 a.m. on Rewind, Wings, All About Christmas Eve. 2 a.m. on BET, BET Her, sorry. Tyler Perry's Assisted Living, Christmas Staycation. And finally, 12 p.m. on Hallmark Family, The Ultimate Gift from 2007.

[00:14:40] And that was your Christmas TV Minute-ish, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com. Very good. Thank you, TV Scotty. That was a wonderful job. Let's get to last week's battle, which, as you mentioned, was original Christmas songs with unoriginal names. Let's find out who pulled this one out. We do have a winner, but we also have a tie. But the tie is for second and third place. Yeah, but I'll take last place on this one. I'm fine with that one. Very good.

[00:15:05] In last place, with 31% of the votes, Jesus Wrote a Christmas Song by The Usual. I didn't think this would even get close to 19 votes. I figured this would be me and four other people, possibly. It's a fascinating song. It's weird. I can't say that I brought it because I think it's such a great song. I just brought it because it's weird, honestly. It's just out there and different, and that's what I'm looking for sometimes. It is weird, yeah.

[00:15:35] But also with 31% of the vote, we have Christmas Song by St. Lennox. This was brought to us by listener Adam Parker from the Merry Britzmas podcast. And if you know Adam, I've had the chance to meet him. He's a lovely person. He loves these melancholy kind of down, I don't know. He just has a style about him, and I like him. I like Adam for it. Yeah. I think when this was playing last week, I don't know if it made air or not, but it kind

[00:16:04] of reminds me of like if Bob Dylan today said, I'm going to make an indie rock song. I don't remember if we cut that or not because we might have been saying it while we were talking. Yeah. But yeah, just a gritty version there. Yeah. That was brought by the listeners, Adam Parker, as you mentioned. And that means me. 37% of the vote with This Christmas by Dot. Pulling it out and once again taking the lead here in this year's battle. Oh, I thought we were tied up again.

[00:16:32] We were, but now I'm back ahead. Oh, okay. I thought I had pulled away into nine. It doesn't matter. It's neck and neck for all three, and we're going into the holiday season with a tie. And obviously, it ends when we start the dailies. That's when we consider the season to be over. So we're going into the seventh, eighth, ninth inning here with the baseball metaphor. Usually, it's a runaway at this point. So it's just nice for it to be close. Oh, yeah. Usually, there's no point.

[00:17:01] And then I start bringing like some severe garbage. But not this time. I really have to think about it. But don't worry. I brought a stinker again this week. Well, it's time to talk about It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas, which I had a hard time, not because there's not a lot of versions of this on Bandcamp, but because we had so many submissions. So by the time I got around to it, I try not to pick what the listeners have found. So there were a couple that I was like, that's pretty good, but that was already submitted. And so, you know. And there were only six pages of results on Bandcamp. This is not a song that has a million versions.

[00:17:30] I found a lot of karaoke style versions again. Sure. Put some great stuff in there. Yeah, absolutely. Let's see what we got. Up first, we have It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Brad McNett. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go Take a look in the five and ten Glistening once again With candy canes and silver lanes aglow

[00:17:58] It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Toys in every store But the prettiest sight to see Is the holly that will be On your own front door A pair of hop-along boots and a pistol that shoots Is the wish of Barney and Ben Dolls that will talk and will go for a walk Is the hope of Janice and Jen And mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again

[00:18:28] It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas Everywhere you go There's a tree in the Grand Hotel One in the park as well The sturdy kind that doesn't mind the snow Little jazzy male vocal version there. I like that. That was nice. It's not like the powerhouse vocals that will blow you away, but a nice version of the song. Yeah. If I walked into a restaurant Yeah. And there was a jazz trio there

[00:18:58] and that's what they were playing, I'd be like, heck yeah! Order me double appetizers. Which is why restaurants should do this. Absolutely. Up next, we have It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas by Ghost Town Remedy.

[00:20:10] Little correction there, Bran. This is, it's beginning to look a lot like Shredmas by Ghost Town Remedy and you can tell why. I understand. Yeah. Yes, I understand now. Ghost Town Remedy. But it is, they did not take liberty with the lyrics. It's just the title. Very good. Ghost Town Remedy. Very cool. All right. The last version we have is by a band called Polyphia. Or Polyphia.

[00:21:33] Not what I was expecting, but boy did I enjoy that. I liked all three today. I don't think I've ever heard a guitar solo over a trap beat before. But I don't hate it. I don't hate it. That was fun. Three good versions. Three very different versions as well. So really going to come down to which one you like the most. As you mentioned, we had a lot of listener submissions this week. We got submissions from Mike Big Spectacle, Truelock, Jeff Dale, Adam Parker, Mary Pulte, Lance Garman, Michelle Byerly, Jack Unverfurth,

[00:22:03] Tony Dixon, Kim Gazerak, John Rice, and True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, True, Brand, it snuck up on us this month that we are recording the Christmas party episode this Thursday, which is tomorrow. It is tomorrow. So today we need it. The good news is I have a, I have most of what we need already because a lot of people submitted stuff for the July party episode and I wasn't able to use it because of the live Right.

[00:22:32] Bramble Fest one that we did. So I do have a ton of stuff. Okay. But, you know, you still have time to get it in and you know what? Don't stress about it. If you're the, I have a couple people in mind that usually submit stuff. I don't want to call them out because if they feel like taking the month off, they can. It's August. There you go. Absolutely. It's August. You earned this. You sure did. Well, this was a lot of fun, Scotty. I can't wait to do it again with you. Oh, wait, what's, I forgot to mention what next week is. It's Instrumental Battle. It's Instrumental Battle. So go ahead and send in your

[00:23:01] instrumental Christmas songs for a battle next week. Make it good because coming out of the wire here. Yeah, it really is. I'm excited, Brian. We're heading into the Burma. We are heading into this. We are so close. We're close to that 100 day mark. It's finally starting to shape up here. We got like four days of rain in Denver and my lawn said, oh, thank goodness. I can grow now a little bit. You say that? The lawn has actually gone dormant and that's something that happens here. I have not mowed the lawn since before Bramble Fest.

[00:23:31] Wow. I know. How about that? Because it gets so hot and dry. It just goes into a dormant phase. I can't do it anymore. I can't grow. Which is good because I'm not going out there with the sun baking down on me. It's everything I can do just to do it at like 10 p.m. I understand, Scotty. If you listen closely, Scotty, you might be able to hear the practicing of Helga. I believe Helga is practicing her broom sleeps and flying around the neighborhood

[00:23:59] and so I'm sure Helga will be making an appearance here soon as we approach Halloween. Yeah, we're going to have to do an episode or two of Halloween morning, aren't we? I think, well, Halloween evening. Oh, sorry. Yes. That's how out of practice I am at this. You'll get there. I say we have to do it. I'm looking forward to it. It's always so much fun. We get so much great feedback from listeners on it and yeah, we'll have to see if Helga is going to show up. She showed up at Bramble Fest. So yeah, absolutely. All right.

[00:24:27] Come on back on Tuesday for our Christmas party episode and then of course Wednesday for your regularly scheduled Christmas morning episode. Until then, Merry Christmas. 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.