The Residents The 12 Days of Brumalia

Brumalia was a month-long party the ancient Romans threw at the end of the year. It was a kind of New Years Eve that didn't stop at midnight. Instead, it stopped on December 25th. This went on until 600-700 c.e., it's hard to know exactly. The Catholic church had set up a date they liked for the observance of the birth of Jesus. That date was January 6th. The problem was that the Brumalia party folks cast a bit of a pall over the approaching birthday of Jesus, as it occurred just a few days earlier. The Catholic solution was to move Jesus' birthday to December 25th, and pretend that everyone was celebrating Jesus rather than what they were actually celebrating. Fine, but they had to deal with the fact that January 6th was already set up as the correct date. Therefore, they invented the 12 Days of Christmas that lead up to January 6th. The explanation was something like, Jesus was born on December 25th but it wasn't until January 6th that people realized maybe he was more than just another human. So both dates became kind of an event. Okay, so the Residents made an online party and called it the 12 Days of Brumalia, a thin joke stealing the Christian ""12 days"" back for the Pagans. Settling the score, if anyone had noticed or cared. So, every day for 12 days starting December 25th, The Residents gave away a song on the internet. You also get an Epiphany tune, which is the one for January 6th celebrating Jesus being a god and not a human. You also get a single version of one of the Brumalia songs pumped up for radio. As if that isn't enough, you also get ""Prelude to the Teds."" The Residents were working on a story about two guys named Ted who were very dependent on each other. I mean, really dependent. They never finished the project but they did release these four songs through the They Might Be Giants HELLO record club. All in all, you get 18 tunes recorded between 1993 and 2003.