Are these original Christmas songs some of the best?

If you’ve followed my blog for almost any amount of time, you’re aware I listen to Christmas music year-round, and even more during the season. I recently shared my favorites this season but I want to list a couple of more because hey, there are tons of great holiday songs, right!? Let me know what you think about these. I don’t know if they’re popular, recognizable, or has no one heard of them at all. Maybe they’re obscure but they could be on a top 10 holiday song list in the near future…

“Merry Christmas Everyone” Shakin’ Stevens, released in 1985.

“Christmas in L.A.” Vulfpeck, released in 2014.

“Christmas Island” Train, released in 2024.

“Christmas Is The Time To Say ‘I Love You'” Billy Squier, released in 1981.

“Merry Merry Christmas Everyone” Jon McLaughlin, released in 2010.

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

-Out of the Wilderness

Christmas in 2025 – Laughter and Love

There’s a lot that makes up each one of us. We’re not just a son or a daughter. Or one of a number of siblings. We have that as part of what makes us who we are but also a God-given personality, strengths, weaknesses, and of course the experiences of our lives that affect how we interact with other people, how we think about ourselves, what excites us, and what ticks us right off.

I was doing my Christian duty and praying yesterday…

…and I thought about some tendencies I have to be uptight, ornery, stubborn, selfish, and even mean sometimes. So my prayer went to two words: Love and Laughter. As this Christmas season comes and goes and I’ll be spending time with friends, family, and strangers around town, I want people in my radius to feel funny. Well, dang it that sounds awkward. I don’t want them to feel funny like they have a tickle in their throat (COVID symptoms and whatnot!), I want them to feel humor. Laugh. Joy. And to feel loved. I was also thinking specifically of my family who can (and has) seen the best of me and the worst of me. I want them to feel loved, I want them to laugh. If I can be the instigator (and I do love instigating things 😵‍💫) of love like the love God has for us and laughter from the wonderful and sometimes wonderfully weird experiences God lets us have, I will consider this season a success.

Merry Christmas. I hope this week and next week for you have love or laughter, or the best case scenario… both!

-Out of the Wilderness

I designed a hat!

Chalk this up to things I didn’t think I’d be doing in 2025 but a few weeks ago I was with my brother in St. Petersburg, Florida. We had a lot of time together and part of that was swapping stories and one of my stories was about a landmark moment in my camping life. It’s been a few years now since I came across this unforgettable deer at a state park in Louisiana. For the backstory of the doe, click here. While I was messing around on my computer in the amazing design software Affinity, I wanted to take the picture of the deer and make it into an image suitable for print, although I really didn’t have an idea for what that would mean tangibly.

In fact, her picture started as a cow (more on that later) and slowly morphed into the final image.

I showed my brother what I was working on and he’s a “big picture” guy so he immediately had ideas for sharing the picture and the story of my encounter with the deer. Long story short, she’s now on a hat and my brother gifted the hat to his coworkers in central Florida.

I write a lot of words but I’m not sure I have words for how I feel in this moment. It’s just a hat in one city of one state in a country surrounded by many other countries in a big world. But gosh I feel like I’ve accomplished something big in my little world. I can’t wait to find out what else this might turn into with designing pictures and even sharing the story of the deer with people along the way.

-Out of the Wilderness

Cell Phones Make Television A Lot Easier

I was watching one of my favorite shows, “Tracker,” the other day and something happened that brought about a question in my mind. The scene had three people in it and at the conclusion of the scene, one character was no longer needed to keep the story going. So how did the writers get that character out? Simple. Her cell phone rang, she responded, “I need to take this,” and she exited the scene.

Naturally, the question that arose in my mind: Before cell phones, how did writers remove characters from scenes? It’s not the easiest Google search but here is one result I got.

That search result was more for permanent character disappearances but it kind of works for short-term, too. A character leaves the scene to join something else off-camera. Or they simply exit through a door. Or someone enters to take the character out of the scene. Or there’s a previous arrangement (an appointment or date) and the time has come for that character to go do that thing.

So the summarization is this: with the invention of the cell phone, scenes got a lot easier to write. What are your thoughts about this quandary?

-Out of the Wilderness

The Oily Duck Dawn Soap Commercial – The Song!

I’ve been seeing a new Dawn soap commercial with a cute little duck suffering from an unidentified oil spill. Instead of focusing on the harm and the anger aimed at the company responsible, the ad focuses on the saving of the little duck. Check it out then scroll down for more…

The Song. The uplifting gospel-style song is called “Better Day Comin'” by AG and Garrison Starr. Here’s the full track released in 2019…

This is a great commercial from Dawn because it appeals to the compassionate part of our human nature. I mean, who wants to see a little duckling suffer? No one. So we go out and buy Dawn. Does it work on greasy dishes? It almost doesn’t matter. But I’m guessing it can help clean a duck off and our dirty plates, too.

-Out of the Wilderness