28 weeks / 196 days until Christmas! (Original Christmas Song Battle)

[00:00:02] This is a Bramble Jam Podcast. Live from the North Pole, it's time for Christmas Morning, the daily show where every day is Christmas. Here are your hosts, Bran and Scott. Wow. Hello, everybody. It's your good friend Bran with you again this week for another episode of Christmas Morning.

[00:00:41] And what would Christmas Morning be without my good friend, your good friend, Scott. Scott, Merry Christmas, pal. Ho, ho, ho and Merry Christmas to you, Bran. How's it going? It is great to be here, Scott. It feels...

[00:00:53] You know, we're getting so close, and I don't want to jump the gun, but we're getting so close to the halfway mark that I just got a little extra pep in my step, I gotta be honest.

[00:01:04] You, I know, have been watching some Christmas stuff, which I'm sure you'll talk about here in a second. I have been also watching some Christmas stuff because I'm just so excited. I've been editing some Best Of stuff for Deck the Hallmark, and I like having something

[00:01:18] on in the background. So this morning I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Parades from 2014. It was a magical year. So yeah, I'm feeling pretty good, and I'm just, I don't know, I'm getting excited and antsy at the same time, if that makes sense. Yeah.

[00:01:33] I told you a long time ago that I have an archive of all the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parades for as long as my daughter has been born, and I kept the commercials in them because that's half the fun. Actually, it's probably more than half the fun.

[00:01:45] And I have one of those magical years where it snowed on the parade. It might've been like 2016. It snows in 2014. Oh, maybe it's 2014. It snows in 2014. Okay, cool. This parade is perfect, Scott. Yeah. It's got people slipping because of the snow. It's great.

[00:02:00] Oh, are you talking about the dancer that slips and falls? Yes! Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Man, that cracks me up. I feel bad for that girl. Let's get into the mailbag because I've got some other good stuff that's going to make you excited.

[00:02:12] Okay, I'm ready for it. Letters! We get letters! We get stacks and stacks of letters! First, a couple self-indulgent emails that talk about how much people missed us while we were gone. Oh, that's right. We made them feel bad last week. Yeah, we did. And they rolled in.

[00:02:30] It worked really well. Good. First, from Mary Poltey, hey guys, the week felt incomplete without the podcast. I really missed my weekly Christmas fix. Brian, I hope you had a relaxing vacation and you're ready to bring us into the holiday season. Merry Christmas from Mary. Thank you, Mary.

[00:02:45] I appreciate that. I'm ready, Mary. I'm ready. Yeah. Another one from John Rice. I lost this in the mail. Darn USPS. They're going downhill. I missed hearing you guys on your small vacation.

[00:02:58] Honestly, though, I considered it a wash because that week we did hear from you guys with the party episode. That's probably why people didn't email us as much, Brian. That's right. And maybe people took us up on the offer to wait until the following week to listen because

[00:03:13] knowing that we were going to be out. Maybe that's what we have to do from now on. Instead of if we ever need to take a week off, we just do double episodes and then people won't care. Okay. Another email from Madison LaVenture. Hi Brian and Scott.

[00:03:26] I hope this email finds you well. I wanted to share an exciting update I found on countdownuntilchristmas.com. First Brian, I didn't know that was a site, but I'm going to be checking that one out. QVC's Christmas in July will be kicking off on June 22nd.

[00:03:42] I thought you both might be interested in this festive news. I very much enjoy having it on in the background. Thanks for all you do and for your hard work. Oh yes. I love having this on in the background. June 22nd. It just keeps getting earlier every year.

[00:03:57] It's not quite Christmas in July, but who's complaining? I know. I got a kick out of the fact that Hallmark obviously plays by their own rules and also starts Christmas in July and June and they're premiering two movies for Christmas in July

[00:04:11] and only one of them airs in actual July, which is funny. Why not? Who cares? It's just the title at this point. It's just an excuse to watch Christmas stuff in the summer. That's right. It's like Black Friday. The Black Fridays creep into August now. As they should.

[00:04:27] Yeah, as they should. And finally from Tony Dixon, our buddy from the Happy Halloween podcast. He says, Hey there, Christmas morning crew. So Brand's news story last week about the girl having a Christmas themed birthday party

[00:04:38] in July reminded me that back in my first marriage we would host themed 4th of July parties. One year we decided to go with Christmas in July. So there I was in the sweltering July heat in Kentucky, if you know, you know, dragging

[00:04:52] out all of my outdoor decorations to set up in the backyard. I also strung lights along the fence and in a couple of trees. I looked into painting the grass white to emulate snow, but unfortunately that was cost prohibitive.

[00:05:04] We managed to get Christmas themed paper plates and napkins. We sent out Christmas cards as invitations and I mixed in some Christmas songs to background music. It was great. We did however stick with traditional summer cookout food.

[00:05:16] I wasn't trying to bake a whole turkey in the middle of the summer. If you ever get a chance to throw a summertime Christmas party, I definitely recommend it. Thank you, Tony. What are your thoughts there, Brian?

[00:05:26] It sounds like a great idea and I appreciate that Tony goes above and beyond. A lot of people would throw a Christmas in July party and just say, Hey, come dressed like a Christmas party or something. But he was pulling out decorations.

[00:05:41] He's doing the extra work and Tony only knows how to do things one way and it's all the way. And so I love that. That's right. And if you haven't checked it out yet, check out the happy Halloween podcast. It's a monthly quick dose of Halloween.

[00:05:54] A lot of fun. I think it's great. So thank you, Tony. I got another, I got a new review for you if you're interested in hearing it. This is two weeks in a row we have a new review. I know this is a pretty special thing.

[00:06:06] This is from Liljih. It's L-I-O-O-I-J-J-H-H. So clearly a real name. The cat walked across the keyboard while they were doing the review. I get it. No kidding. Christmas every Wednesday morning. They say every Tuesday I look forward to one of the best Christmas morning podcasts.

[00:06:30] It's the only one I know of. But Brandon Scott make every Wednesday feel like Christmas even in May. Thank you so much. And it's nice to know people are looking forward to they get to Tuesday and they're like, oh boy, tomorrow's Christmas morning day. So that's exciting.

[00:06:45] Oh, I was confused there. I thought maybe they lived in a part of the world where when we drop the episode on Wednesday, it's actually Tuesday for them. I was trying to figure out how that works. I don't think that's possible. But yeah, that's really nice.

[00:06:57] I like that making it feel like Christmas every Wednesday. I like that too, Scotty. You got a joke for us by chance? I do. And not only do I have a joke, I have another Christmas joke submitted by a listener.

[00:07:10] This one is submitted to us by Jessica Trinidad. Why did Santa go to music school? To get on the right tune. No. It was to improve his rapping skills. What the what the? It's not bad. It's not bad. I don't hate it. Okay.

[00:07:28] In Jessica's defense, she told me that she asked ChatGPT come up with a Christmas joke and you know, not everything that comes out of ChatGPT is gold, but it was not bad. Not bad at all. Not bad at all.

[00:07:41] If you told me to make up a Christmas joke, I'm not sure I could do one of that quality. I'm worried for the, for your future, Scott, as the joke, as the jokes are around here, you might be taken over by AI before you know it.

[00:07:52] That's fine by me. I don't care. Let's do the countdown. 196 days until Christmas! Under 200, Scotty. Can you believe that? We made it. Hooray, huzzah, we did it. I noticed this the other day when it hit 199 and I thought, oh, I should really text Brian

[00:08:16] and then that was a fleeting thought. I apologize, but I got excited. I also noticed that I had a, and I also thought about texting you. What's wrong with us? But I got the app on my phone that gives me a little, little update, update right there

[00:08:30] in the corner. So every time I open up my phone, I see it and a little badge notification with the number of days. That's right. So let it be known, Scott, that I think about you at least once a day. Oh, I love it. That's fantastic.

[00:08:41] I think of you too, but it's usually because I'm listening to Deck the Hallmark. Fair, fair. I got some news if you want it. Well, hold on, hold on. It is only 111 days until October 1st. Wow, wow, wow. October.

[00:08:55] Okay, so when we hit the 99 on that one, I'll get really, really excited. I haven't gone over to Hobby Lobby yet to see what the old status of the Christmas section is.

[00:09:06] I have a feeling it's going to be like end of July, but if anybody out there happens to be at a Hobby Lobby and sees Christmas stuff, please write in. ChristmasMorningPodcast.gmail.com.

[00:09:14] This is always the fun part of the year where we get emails from people letting us know when they spot Christmas out in the wild. So we're entering into that season, Scott. It's exciting. Yeah, it's our Christmas scouts. That's what we have. That's right.

[00:09:28] The morning people are also scouting it out for us and I couldn't appreciate that more. Absolutely. All right, now let's do the news, Brian. Today is June 11th, 2024. Here's the news. Scott, you may know this name, a famous, famous actor, Jennifer Love Hewitt is heading back to Lifetime.

[00:09:58] I didn't know that Jennifer Love Hewitt had been on Lifetime before, but she is going to star. She's going to direct. She's going to executively produce a new movie this holiday season called The Holiday Junkie.

[00:10:11] It is inspired by her own relationship with the holiday and the loss of her mother. And the movie follows The Holiday Junkie, a decorating and planning service company run by Andy, played by Jennifer Love Hewitt and her mother Mimi.

[00:10:25] And after Mimi passes away, Andy is forced to face the first Christmas without her mummy. Why did I say it like that? Without her mom and carry the holiday junkie torch on her own. Despite the challenges, Andy may also find some love at Christmas along the way.

[00:10:43] I like Jennifer Love Hewitt. It's always fun to see like a bigger deal kind of be in one of these movies. And so the fact that she cares enough about this to not only be in it, but also act, but

[00:10:54] also direct it and produce it seems like it's a passion project for her. I'm excited for this one and I'm sure we'll be covering it this holiday season over on Deck the Hallmark. I am a big fan of Jennifer Love Hewitt. She is the Lacey Chabert of yesteryear.

[00:11:08] And that's all the judge says I'm allowed to say about Lacey Chabert anymore. So big fan, big fan. All right. OK, good on you. That was really good. I feel like really you're working on your self-control and I'm really proud of you. Let's take a quick break, Scotty.

[00:11:22] Well, I got a gag order. I got a gag order on the Lacey Chabert comment. Let's take a quick break. Welcome back, everybody, to Christmas morning. It wouldn't be Christmas morning without a peek inside of the TV guide for an update

[00:11:42] on what we can watch this week that would give us some of that Christmas spirit. TV Scotty is here. TV Scotties on all the hard work without the help of any website. He just knows he has downloaded all the information into his mind.

[00:11:55] He's parsed through what is important and what's not. And it's now time for him to give us all of that. Brain brain brain. Yeah, that's not how it works. But what do you mean this on how I just take it from mostly Christmas dot com. Oh, oh, OK.

[00:12:08] Well, either way, take it away. All right. Here are your Christmas TV specials for the next couple of days. Courtesy of mostly Christmas dot com. Wednesday, 9 a.m. on Sundance. Sanford and Son. Ebenezer Sanford. 7 p.m. on Lifetime Castle. Secret Santa. 9 p.m. on Cozy. Frazier.

[00:12:24] The fight before Christmas. You might have to have Joe Fulton, the Christmas aficionado, review that one at some point, Brian. I agree. 10 30 p.m. on Nick at Night Friends. The one with the holiday armadillo. Thursday, 12 a.m. on TBS. Modern Family Snowball. 4 30 a.m. on Catchy.

[00:12:40] I have never heard of Catchy before. That's a new network. They're just popping up all over the place. Yeah, I've heard of the special, though. It's our Miss Brooks Christmas show. Nineteen fifty two. 5 30 a.m. on VH1. Living single living Kringle. 10 a.m. on Pop. ER. The Gift.

[00:12:57] 9 20 p.m. on TV Land. Everybody Loves Raymond. Jazz Records. And 11 30 p.m. on Antenna. Designing Women. I'll Be Home for Christmas. Friday, 12 a.m. on Ovation. Murdoch Mysteries. The Night Before Christmas. 8 a.m. on Hallmark Family. Highway to Heaven. Merry Christmas from Grandpa. 9 a.m. on VH1.

[00:13:13] The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Deck the Halls. 11 30 a.m. on E. Modern Family. The Old Man in the Tree. 10 50 a.m. on Comedy Central. South Park. Christmas Snow. 1 p.m. on VH1. The Amy Fox Show. Christmas Deja Vu. 7 p.m. on Hallmark. A Heidelberg Holiday.

[00:13:28] 9 p.m. on Hallmark Family. The Good Witch's Gift. And 10 p.m. on ION. Bull. Home for the Holidays. And those are your Christmas TV specials for the next couple of days, courtesy of MostlyChristmas.com. Thank you, TV Scotty. Lots to look forward to there. I'm excited about that.

[00:13:44] Thanks for the update. Let's get to the Christmas music battle. Let's get to last week, of course, with Holiday Road. Scotty, I was checking the, um, the, the, not rankings. I was checking the, what is it called when you look at how many wins people have? Results?

[00:14:04] The results. I was looking at the tally of the results so far. The leaderboard? The results? Okay. The leaderboard, yes. As of right now, Scotty, you are at eight, I'm at six, and the listeners are at six. So me and the listeners are duking it out.

[00:14:19] So this is a pretty big one to see. Maybe one of us will break that or you'll just take a bit of a commanding lead. I'm not going to be taking more of a commanding lead this week, I can promise you that.

[00:14:30] In last place, the Aquabats came in last place. I can't believe this. This is ridiculous. Brought to you by Scotty. I stand behind that choice. I love it. Only 18 people of the 50 some odd people that voted thought so, but okay, I got my people. It's a great track.

[00:14:48] It's a great track. Not much better is second place with only one more vote. This is Holiday Road by Excelsior, which can only mean one thing, Scotty. That was brought by me, by the way, and that can only mean one thing.

[00:15:02] The theory of acapella groups has been proven. The acapella bump? Yes. The acapella bump is ridiculous. The winner with 43.9%, Scott. It's nice. I don't mind listening to it. It's good. Just listen to those harmonies though. You can't beat that. The listeners got it right this week.

[00:15:22] So, so good. I think they did get it right, which means the listeners are now in second place. Eight, seven, six. Scott, listeners, Bran. So this is pretty big week for me. I don't want to be falling behind by much more.

[00:15:35] The UGA Accidentals was brought to us by Joe W. Yes. Yeah, you're not going to fall behind. I know which one of the choices today is yours and I think you've got a shot. So don't count yourself out yet, Bran, okay? All right. I appreciate that.

[00:15:48] This is an original song battle week. I don't have a song specific Christmas tree effect, so I pulled a random one and I think you're going to like this one. Okay. Many historians believe the 12 days of Christmas started out as a French poem, which made its

[00:16:02] way over to Newcastle, England in the 18th century. Originally, the gift was merely mentioned as just one partridge, which in French is spelled P-E-R-D-R-I-X. English children saying this line as a partridge, un père drit, in an effort to keep the French saying in place.

[00:16:23] And when you hear that phrase out loud, un père drit sounds like you're actually saying in a pear tree. Now I haven't corroborated this fact with anything, but it sounds highly plausible to me, Brandon. That makes a lot of sense and that's typically how things go.

[00:16:38] You know, you're trying to translate as best you can and you go, oh, it just sounds right. So let's just go with that. Yeah. It's a screw up. Most good things are screw ups. That's my new theory. But just like you, my friend. That's right.

[00:16:50] That's what my parents always said. You know, that's right. Let's get to the original Christmas music battle. Up first is Christmas is awesome by, oh my gosh, I can't believe it. The Aquabats. So that song is only like 55 seconds long. That is the entire song.

[00:17:50] That's not a clip. That's the song. Ah, it's a good one though. A Christmas is awesome. Christmas is rad. I mean, they're not wrong. So, uh, that's all you can hope for.

[00:17:58] Now the question is, did I bring that because I brought the Aquabats last week or did I just get some people excited? Maybe 18 of them about the Aquabats. So we'll have to see. Not telling. To muddy the waters a bit, Scott, here's another song.

[00:18:13] This is December 24th, 1993 by the Guilty Parties. One night I sat away with old Saint Nick. It was December 24th, 1993. Milk and cookies by the Christmas tree. My eyes heavy, anticipation stronger. I know that if I can stay awake a little longer, I will see a fat b-

[00:18:40] Who's that coming through my back screen door? He's got a sleigh I've never seen before. Bright red suit, steel-toed boot. Oh my God, this is Santa. It's just like a dream come true to me this Christmas Eve.

[00:19:05] I gotta admit, another song that sounds like one that I would have brought. So you're right. Clear as mud around here. Who knew that there was so much original Christmas ska out there? Not me. This is news. I did because it's awesome. That's why. It is awesome.

[00:19:21] Lastly, this is all I want for Christmas, is a rock show by the Holiday Place.

[00:20:23] This is a rock show. Bran, I'm not sure if it's a good battle this week. I think we might have a runaway contender, but it's in the hands of the listeners, not in the hands of music Scotty. I think it could be close.

[00:20:36] I think we got three like, you know, rockier fun songs. No, no, no ballads, no slow songs. Lots of drums. I think it could be close. No slow boys today. No, no slow boys. Nope. So thank you so much for everybody.

[00:20:53] We got listener submissions this week from Lenora Gilbert, Lance Garman, Jack Unverfurth, Tia King and Drew Basic. Thank you all for submitting. Amazing. What a crop. What a crop. You can go ahead and send in submissions for next week. It is instrumental Christmas song. Did you say crop?

[00:21:09] It's instrumental Christmas song week. So you can send in any sort of instrumental Christmas song that you can find on Bandcamp. It's always a lot of fun. You never know what you're going to find good or bad.

[00:21:21] So go ahead and start perusing and send in stuff as you find it, Scotty. And if you have submitted an instrumental song in the past and it was not chosen for the battle, it's still up for grabs.

[00:21:30] You may absolutely resubmit it if you want, especially if you're Drew Basic who does that every single time. There you go. I mean, that's one way to do it. It keeps the job easy. You just keep doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:21:44] And Brian, I want to point out that we have a new submission to the backlog. It's from Jessica Trinidad. The song is, What are you doing New Year's Eve? And she did put the caveat that I'm not sure this is a Christmas song.

[00:21:57] Jessica, I would say it's a Christmas song because that's the only time I ever hear it. So I think it's totally up for grabs before we actually choose it to battle Brian. I'm going to do some thorough research and make sure there are enough versions on Bandcamp

[00:22:11] so we don't have another jingling incident. I feel like there's gotta be a lot of versions. I hear so many different versions of this song during the holiday season that I feel like there has to be a lot of covers out there. And I love this song.

[00:22:24] I think it's a great pick. The fact that we haven't battled it is kind of surprising to me. The song is good. A lot of versions are kind of slow and almost a little whiny.

[00:22:32] So I hope that somebody does something really interesting and new and novel with it, but we're going to find out. So thank you for submitting that, Jessica. We are going to find out. Scotty, I think we did it. I think we've successfully Christmas morninged.

[00:22:46] And the good news is, is we're going to be back next week and we're going to be one week closer to Christmas. That's right. I can't wait. Thank you everybody for keeping my Christmas spirits up in the heat of the summer here.

[00:22:57] I can't speak for Greenville, but in Denver it's been almost a little unseasonably warm for June and it's going to be a long summer, but I got all my people and we can do it. It's only about a hundred days until Halloween.

[00:23:10] Not Halloween itself, but when the Halloween stuff is in full force in the stores. And even when it's warm, I can walk into Michael's or Joanne and look at that and start feeling cool. So I'm excited. And smell those cinnamon brooms. I love those. There you go.

[00:23:25] That's all you can hope for. The smells, they really start making it feel like it's getting real. So I'm looking forward to that. Big smell guy over here. Big smell guy, indeed. All right. We're going to be back next week with another one. Until then, Merry Christmas.

[00:23:45] 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.