20 Weeks / 142 days until Christmas (“Greensleeves” 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...

[00:00:31] Well, well, well, hello everybody! Happy August to you and Merry Christmas. Welcome to another episode of Christmas Morning. I'm Brand and I am here with my buddy Scott. Scott, Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas, Brandon. My quest to feel cozy continues. Yeah, I understand that and I think that it might be a hard press to find some cozy this month, but I think this is it, Scotty. This is the last lousy month of the year.

[00:01:00] Totally agree. We're in a really hot month. I don't know if July is hotter or August is hotter. It's been hotter in Denver, I can tell you that. It was 102 on Monday. I'm sure to our friends in Arizona, like Lenora Gilbert, that's nothing. That's nighttime to them. I think it depends on where you live, yeah. But I do have good breaking news, Brand. Yeah?

[00:01:19] Starbucks did announce their fall menu lineup in some Instagram posts and it looks like it drops on August 22nd, so you can get a lot of pumpkin spice things. There you go. We were talking before we started recording about a pumpkin something shake and espresso, which sounds pretty yummy. And then there's a whole bunch of like apple pie flavored drinks. Yeah. And I'm pretty excited about that, although none of them are zero sugar, so I'm kind of out of luck there.

[00:01:47] I will say the pumpkin spice latte like pre-mixed thing that they have at stores, so you can buy it in like a... Like in a jar? Yeah. That's already out and your boy is drinking it right now, Scotty. And how is it? It's delightful. It's a trick. I'm getting tricked into thinking it's not August 5th. You know who else is doing just fine are the listeners, and we're finally getting somewhere on this huge mailbag. I can start to see the bottom, so let's open it up. Letters.

[00:02:17] We get letters. We get stacks and stacks of letters. The first email is from our friend Lance Garman. Lance says, this is not your typical Christmas in the wild story, but it's one I really liked. Our local Habitat for Humanity resale store filled a shelf with all their Christmas donations for sale and shared it on Facebook. I didn't go buy anything, but it made me feel warm and Christmassy. And he put in parentheses, it's in Salisbury, Maryland.

[00:02:43] And on the shelf, it's a whole bunch of like village type things. Yeah. I love a village. I would go crazy if I saw that. It's just nice having it all together, you know? It really is. So I've grown to really enjoy thrifting, and it's fun to teach my daughter that not everything has to be full price and that there are fun treasures to be found. And I would absolutely go nuts if I saw this. I would be filling my cart with stuff.

[00:03:11] That's a good call, though, as somebody who is a newfound village person. Oh, yeah. I haven't really thought about going to the thrift stores to grow out my village. This is not a bad idea. There have to be thrift store finds. Oh, absolutely. Because the village that my mother had, I don't want it particularly. And she had a lot of pieces. I don't have room for a lot of this stuff. And I'm not going to get rid of them.

[00:03:37] But I can imagine others in a situation like that would say, just donate these things. It looks like this is all from one person, though, because it's all the same brand of village. Yeah, Victorian village. Never heard of it. But it looks like a lot of fun. Absolutely. I have an email from Laura Beth Harp. Laura says, this started as a Christmas in the wild spotting, but it quickly turned into a story I will never forget. My friends and I just went on a girl's trip to St. Simmons Island in Georgia. As soon as we got to the island, we stopped in a gift shop to do a little shopping.

[00:04:07] And I was so excited this store had a dedicated Christmas section. I love collecting ornaments from places I travel to, so I was thrilled they had a large selection. My girlfriends and I had rented a golf cart for use on the island for the weekend, and we found the cutest ornament with Santa and reindeer riding a golf cart. And it was perfect. Little did I know just how perfect it was. Later that night, we piled into the golf cart to drive to dinner and cruise around.

[00:04:34] We were just about to pull into the restaurant when we saw blue lights in the rearview mirror. The rearview mirror. We were being pulled over. Unfortunately, none of us remember to put on our seatbelts, and we were quickly given a citation and a stern warning. Now, I'm not trying to diminish the seriousness of seatbelt safety, but as the police officer drove away, we all started laughing. It was just so funny that on our long-awaited trip, we got pulled over almost immediately. It is definitely a memory we will never forget, and now this ornament means even more.

[00:05:03] And she included a photo of the ornament brand. It's really cute. You gotta wear a seatbelt on a golf cart. It's a moving vehicle. I didn't even know that they had seatbelts. Now you do. The more you know. No kidding. I do like this ornament. It's very cute. Very nice. Now, here's one from Tom Maloney. Tom says, As I came home from work one night last week, I saw this cloud formation. To me, it looks like the Grinch looking down at Whoville. Maybe it's a stretch, but I took a photo and knew that I would have to send it in. Thanks again for the great podcast.

[00:05:33] Still making my way through the log of past episodes with only 96 left to listen to. Oh, my gosh. So probably almost up to 2025, it sounds like. And I included the photo. I put it on our Instagram, and I put two versions. I put the original Tom sent, and then the second one on Instagram, I added an arrow. Because I'll be honest, Brian, it took me a while. I had to stare at it for a minute, and then all of a sudden it came into focus like one of those magic eye puzzles.

[00:06:02] And I was like, wow, it really does look like that. Yeah, it's like that scene where he is looking down. He's got his hands on his hips looking down at Whoville. Yeah, yeah. For 53 years, I've put up with it now. Yeah, that scene. Yeah. I agree, Tom. I see the Grinch in this, and I thought it was really fun. And we've never got an email like this before, Brian. So it really made me laugh. Do you see Christmas in your clouds? Send us an email. We'd love it.

[00:06:30] I've never seen Christmas in the clouds, but that's a movie, I believe. Christmas in the clouds. But if you do, please send it in. This is a great example of just that offbeat stuff that I love getting and really surprises you. Yeah, very nice. I like that a lot. And that makes up for the fact that we have no new reviews, Scotty. Nothing new. So it is what it is. We're at 315. Nobody loves us. Here's a question. Can we get to 400 by the end of the calendar year? I throw it out to the people.

[00:06:59] Let's see what we can do. I'm not much of a betting man, but I would bet strongly against that one. Well, hey, I never bet against our listeners. 400 by the end of 2026. Let's do it. They can't possibly do it, Brian. No, it's impossible. Not possible. I do have a joke for you, though. Are we still in knock-knock territory? Oh, yeah, we're still in knock-knock territory. All right. It's a rich vein of jokes in there, and they're very easy to find. So are you ready? Okay, I'm ready. Knock-knock. Who's there? Tree.

[00:07:29] Tree who? It's the tree wise men. Come to see baby Jesus. Waka waka. Boy, that is rough, brother. At what point do we retire the joke section? I have at least a dozen more knock-knock jokes, so. Okay, let's see what happens with the dozen other knock-knock jokes and go from there. Let's see the countdown. Go! 142 days until Christmas!

[00:08:01] 20 weeks. Let's go. What's the next number you're excited about? Is it maybe 100? 100. Okay, I was going to say 125, but sure. 125. Well, 100 is the huge one. 100 is huge. We're only a little over a month away from 100 days. September 16th, isn't it? 16th, yeah. Yeah. September 16th. And I famously have my advent calendar that counts down 100 days. And I like, honestly, I forgot to bring it out last year.

[00:08:28] It was after Christmas and I was like, I was forgetting something this year and then it dawned on me. So I don't want to forget this year. Well, I will remind you in 42 days. I do have some other good news. It's 57 days until October 1st. There are so many reasons why I am getting really excited for October. Obviously, Christmas movies start on Hallmark Channel. Yep. A basketball season starts back up.

[00:08:56] Halloween, fall, crisp air. I just, I can't wait for October. Crisp air. Stop selling right there. 57 days. I can make this. That's only eight weeks. I think one of the things that I'm most excited about and we haven't talked about are the days getting shorter. Yeah. And I understand not everybody likes darkness at 5 p.m., but can we all agree somewhere around 7 p.m. is nice?

[00:09:19] I don't like 845 and the sun is still shining and you try to put your kid to bed and explain, you know, how the tilt of the earth works or something. Yeah. It's a lost cause. The kids are just like, nope, sun's out. Just play time. Sun's out. I'm up. That's right. All right. Let's do the news. Let's do it. Today is Wednesday, August 5th, 2026. And here's the news. Scotty, how about this?

[00:09:48] Out in Phoenix, Arizona, the sun is hot and so hot, in fact, that they are shrinking the times that the zoo is open. They're open at 6 a.m. Remember, 7 a.m. for general public. They close at 1 p.m. Because anything after is just too hot for anybody.

[00:10:10] But if you do go to the Phoenix Zoo right now, what you might see is a group of people already putting up holiday lights. Scotty, apparently they start this around June 1st every year. You know, as you want to be outside in Phoenix, you start at June 1st. They put up 4.5 million lights every year. Oftentimes they work weird hours to stay cooler. So you probably won't see them.

[00:10:40] They say we have one guy that gets there at 2.30 in the morning. And then the last guy leaves about after. Wait, whatever. 2.30 in the morning is when they start doing this thing. One of the people that does it says, I hum Christmas music when we're putting up the lights. You think I'd be tired of it after a decade of doing it? But I love the holidays. And it's just fun to be able to decorate for them in July. You know, Christmas in July. It sounds like that person could be a good listener, huh? I know, we got to get this guy on the horn.

[00:11:09] But the goal is to have all the Christmas lights up by Halloween so that the lights can turn on in early November. But I got to ask you this, Scotty. If you got to start putting up the lights on June 1st. I think you're going to ask the same question I was thinking. At what point is it worth just keeping them up? I don't see the point in taking them down, honestly. Yeah, that's really something. If you're in June and you're like, yeah, I'm putting them back up again. Feels like I just took them down. Just leave them.

[00:11:39] Just leave them. What in the world does it hurt? And to me, it's like, you know, people will be walking around the zoo in March and April and be like, oh, dude, we're going to have to come back here during Christmas because look at all the lights that they have up, right? It's like good marketing. You know what would be fun is maybe just leave the single white colored ones up. Because that doesn't always have to feel like Christmas.

[00:12:01] And you could do some sort of thing like a 9 p.m. for adults only, I don't know, have a drink at the zoo kind of thing and turn on the white lights. I'd be happy with that. Absolutely. Going back to the first part about what you said about the zoo's hours, I can't see myself getting up at 6 a.m. to go smell giraffe poop. Yeah. I'm not setting an alarm for that. It's a, you know, a specific thing.

[00:12:26] I mean, if you got kids that are really into zoo animals, I think that's the only reason why you would do that. Yeah. I found that to be very interesting that they start June 1st for the 4.5 million lights. Like, just leave them up, guys. What do you think came first? Do you think the lack of crowds after 1 p.m. came first and they were like, you know, we should just shut the doors here. Or it was like, no, it's too hot, but all these people are at the door. We better put up a sign. I don't know how this all works, but I don't know how y'all do it out there in Phoenix.

[00:12:55] It must be lovely in December. It must be. This sounds awesome, though. If anybody's ever been to the Phoenix Zoo and seen the 4.5 million lights, please let me know how it is because it sounds like that's a lot of lights. I've done the Denver Zoo lights, and I think it's a similar amount. Yeah. When did they start setting up? I don't know. I'm no longer on the crew, but I will be honest, though. It's not something I want to do every single year because it's kind of same, same after a while. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I don't know. Maybe that's another reason they don't leave it up all year.

[00:13:24] The Greenville Zoo, it's obviously a smaller zoo. They do a Christmas thing, and a lot of the decorations are homemade, and some of them are hilarious. They should get our friend Joe Fulton to come out there with his— Joe Fulton puts these things to shame. With his peanuts? It is so funny. Exactly. They should contract him. Yeah, it's so funny. All right, let's take a break. We'll come back. We'll get into the Christmas TV Minute. We will get to the results of last week's battle of instrumental tracks, and then we'll probably do another instrumental battle. I'll be honest with you.

[00:13:54] Yeah, I think it is going to be, yeah. So, let's come back for that here on Christmas Morning. Welcome back, everybody. It is August. Christmas in July has come to an end, but that doesn't mean there's no Christmas TV for you to enjoy. Right, TV Scotty? It kind of means that. Well, but no, I see things. There's stuff listed here. Your sage-like prediction that the listings would dry up was spot on.

[00:14:21] I didn't have to do a whole lot of editing here, and I'm pretty sure we're going to come in right about the minute mark. So, here is your Christmas TV Minute, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com. Wednesday, 11 a.m. on Hallmark, Gilmore Girls, Santa's Secret Stuff. 3 p.m. on Lifetime, Castle, Bad Santa. 4.30 p.m. on USA, 9-1-1, The Christmas Spirit. And 8 p.m. on Get TV, Monk, Mr. Monk and the Man Who Shot Santa. Thursday, 2.30 a.m. on Nick at Night, Friends, The One with the Creepy Holiday Card.

[00:14:49] 3 a.m. on Hallmark, The Waltons, The Children's Carol Part 1. And 4 a.m. on Hallmark, The Waltons, The Christmas Carol Part 2. 9 a.m. on Rewind, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch. It's a hot, hot, hot, hot, hot Christmas. Friday, 2.30 a.m. on Get TV, Community, Abed's Uncontrollable Christmas. That's a great episode. 3.30 a.m. on Rewind, Suddenly Susan, You Will Never Know. 6 p.m. on Hallmark Family, Hearts of Christmas from back in 2016. 6 p.m. on Hallmark, A Bride for Christmas, that's from 2012.

[00:15:18] 8 p.m. on Hallmark Family, A Dickens of a Holiday. And 8 p.m. on Hallmark, Christmas by Starlight. Couple more days, Saturday, 12 a.m. on Cozy, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, He's Making a List, Checking It Twice. 7.30 p.m. on TV Land, Seinfeld, The Strike. And 8 p.m. on TV One, Good Times, Penny's Christmas. Finally, Sunday, 4 p.m. on MTV, The Big Bang Theory, The Santa Simulation. And 7.35 p.m. on TV Land, Everybody Loves Raymond, All I Want for Christmas. And that was your Christmas TV Minute, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com.

[00:15:48] Thank you, TV Scotty. Let's get to last week's Christmas music battle. It was instrumental tracks. I want to rename last week's battle brand to the Christmas music blowout. Spoiler alert, your boy won. But in last place, with 15% of the vote, it is Green Sleeves by Mike Diabo. You might hear this song a few more times today, different versions of it. So stay tuned for that. This was brought to us by listener Lance Garman.

[00:16:15] And this also proves the unmitigated losing streak of surf guitar music. It never, ever does well. Yeah. I loved it, Lance. The same nine people vote for the surf rock. That's right. We're a tight group. We could meet in a closet. That's exactly right. Next, 23% of the vote had stacked the halls by Funkestra. Another Funkestra song not winning, Scotty. What is up with this? Yeah, Funkestra can't do well with our audience.

[00:16:46] I love it. Yeah. You know what, Funkestra? I'm going to keep bringing you because I love you. As you should. Alonzo texted us and said it reminds him of the Austin Powers theme. It really did. Spot on. That was very good. But yes, with 62% of the vote, your boy won. This is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Christian Sands. This is fantastic. It has a pace that is so relaxing.

[00:17:13] This is what I want to listen to at 8 p.m. when it's already dark because it was already dark at 7. I'm feeling cozy. I'm getting cozy right now. So what a great win and a well-deserved one, Bran. Nice job. I'm adding this to my playlist as hard as you. Totally. That's sure. I, I, an entire playlist of that style music would give me the biggest smile. Very nice. 100%. All right. Let's get to today's battle, shall we? Are you ready for it? Green sleeves.

[00:17:43] What was your journey like, Scotty, with green sleeves? Well, we could have, we could have called this one an instrumental battle. I'm pretty sure because I don't think anybody knows the words to green sleeves. I did find two versions that are the original of whatever the language is. Yeah. I don't know what it is either without looking it up, but I know exactly what you mean. This is, this would be like a Celtic style carol or it's probably not Celtic, but something, something European. And it's very medieval and old timey.

[00:18:12] And that would be the, what child is this version? Maybe. I don't know, but I found some great versions. It was fun to listen to. And I really enjoyed all the listener submissions. So it was a fun time, but yeah, I think, I think all three are going to be instrumental today. I think it might be. Let's get to it. Scotty up first. We have green sleeves by the Anthropophoria project and the aquarials.

[00:18:38] Oh, that was a dark version brand.

[00:19:40] That's nice. It's like you're walking through a, a Christmas level and Zelda. Yeah, it is like that. I was thinking a Christmas zoo, but yeah, you're, you're definitely right there. Not the eight bit sound. Like if the Zelda music was very full. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Modern Zelda. Koji Kandi wrote all that. I liked it. I liked that a lot. Up next we have green sleeves. Do I, should I read the thing in the middle? Yeah.

[00:20:06] It's dark wave post-punk dystopian cover by Sam Turekton.

[00:21:18] Oh, another dark version brand. That one has dark right in the title of it too. I mean, it's dark wave. I like that though. Like that's a thing that I would, that I would listen to. That would be a fun, different playlist to queue up and get Christmas, Christmas. Post-punk dystopian Christmas. Dystopian Christmas. Coming soon to a lifetime probably. Last but not least, this is green sleeves by Kings of Hawaii.

[00:21:40] Are we sure that that's not green sleeves by Mike Diabo?

[00:22:37] Here's what I'm wondering. Is that surf guitar version going to do well paired with the other two, which are really dark? I think that's, that's probably its only chance to be honest. I will say I like that. There's subtle differences between the Kings of Hawaii version and the Mike Diabo version. So it's not, not all surf rocks the same. I did. Yeah. I did ask that question last week. Is all surf rock versions of this the same? Subtle differences. We got a lot of submissions this week, Scotty.

[00:23:06] We got a lot of submissions this week. They came in from John Rice, Lance Garman, Mary Pulte, Jen Horneck, Drew Basic, Jack Unverfurth, Kim Gazerak, Tony Dixon, Jesse Jackson, Jeff Dale, a first time submitter and Lenora Gilbert. Thank you all for submitting. What a team of all stars, Brian. I love that. I love that we're in August and we're getting close to like the most submissions we've ever had for a week. That's. Yeah. And last week, I think we had almost the fewest numbers. So it's feast or famine around here.

[00:23:36] Scotty next week is original week. And I had a thought. Share it. Go for it. Because if you remember when we battled this Christmas, do you remember that? Yeah. A couple of weeks ago. There were original songs that were called this Christmas. And it gave me the thought, I want to have original Christmas songs, but the titles of the song are not original. So like this Christmas is an easy one because we just, I literally just found like three of them. Yeah.

[00:24:05] But it happens every once in a while where you are searching for a song and it's an original song, but with a, and you're expecting it to be a cover. Is that too niche of a battle? How about this? It'll be original week. Send in what you want. But I'm going to more heavily weight songs in the randomizer that have the same title as a song we would know. And those are so frustrating when you find those brand. Yeah.

[00:24:33] Because you look at the title and you're like, well, that's not original. I'm looking for an original. The only way you find them is how you described. Yeah. Yeah. It's typically like newer tracks, like It's Christmas by Jonas Brothers, Underneath the Tree, Kelly Clarkson. And these are titles of songs that have become like modern classics, but they're also generic enough to where someone else would write a song called Underneath the Tree and like it gets stuck in there.

[00:24:59] So think, think through that as you're searching for the songs, like think of these modern tracks and go from there. See what you find. Yeah. I like this. This is, this is what August is for. Yeah. Let's alienate all the listeners in the slowest month of the year, right? But find an original song that you like. Send it to me at Christmas morning podcast at gmail.com. It must come from Bandcamp. And if possible, look for ones that have a title that is not an original title. Yeah. I like it. It's original songs without original titles, Brandon. I like that.

[00:25:29] It's just dumb enough to work. Let's see what happens. Oh, it's, it's dumb. All right. We will be back next week. We're also in a new month. So be thinking ahead to the Christmas party episode on the 25th of August. We'd love for you to begin submitting stuff in. I will let you know, Scotty, a Home Depot update. I was at Home Depot yesterday. Nothing. Yep. Nothing Christmas, nothing up on the top shelves. And I did the same for Lowe's. Nothing. It's beginning to give me that time where you, you kind of look up when you walk in and you just go, is it there?

[00:25:59] No, it's not there. It's very empty though, up there. You know, it's coming, but this is not Christmas. I mean, I guess I could have used it for Christmas dudes, but I, you did get me into one of those Facebook groups that does the, here's, here are the new Christmas decorations. And they just released the Christmas tree that I have, the viral TikTok tree, right? Yeah. They released a 2026 version and one of them is a 12 feet version of it, which they've never done before. So if you want this really nice Christmas tree and go check it out on the Home Depot website.

[00:26:29] And I was at Michael's this week and started seeing Christmas in the top stock and snapped a photo and sent it to you of my daughter standing next to a pallet of Christmas trees that they, they were moving up the giant ladder. So it's coming folks. We're, we can do this. We can do it. It'll be here before you know it. We just got to make it through this month really. And then it's smooth sailing. Uh, come up next week for a little dose of Christmas until then. Merry Christmas.

[00:27:06] 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.