Rest Days; A Sociological Study 149 



the introduction of Christianity the day observed in the same rig- 

 orist fashion is Sunday.^- 



The observance of unlucky seasons with communal abstinence 

 may be further illustrated by the practices attaching to epago- 

 menal days. Like intercalary months {supra) they are often 

 regarded as specially critical and important times. The solar 

 year, superseding the lunar year of 354 days, seems to have been 

 generally assumed in the first instance at the round number of 

 360 days, the earth's periodical course around the sun being taken 

 as a multiple of the moon's course around the earth. In ancient 

 Mexico, where a solar calendar came into use, the 360 days were 

 divided into eighteen periods each of twenty days. As their total 

 did not round out the solar year it became necessary to add five 

 davs ; and these possessed an imfavorable character. They were 

 called nenwntcmi, "the superfluous, supplementary days" with 

 the secondary significance of " the useless days " as being conse- 

 crated to no deity and employed for no civic business. That they 

 were considered sinister and unlucky is evident from the absti- 

 nence that characterized them. Nothing of any importance was 

 done on the nemontemi. The house was not swept, no legal case 

 was tried, and any person so unfortunate as to be born on one of 

 these days was destined for a poor and miserable life. At the 

 same time, the nemontemi possessed a prophetic power for the 

 whole year. "They were also careful," says Father Sahagun, 

 " during these fatal days not to fall asleep during the day, not to 

 quarrel together, not to trip or to fall, because they said that if any 

 of these things befell them, they would continue to befall them 

 thence forevermore."^^ 



In Yucatan, among the Alayas, the same abstinence prevailed 

 during the epagomenal days there called xina kaba kin, the " days 

 without names." " On these days men left the house as seldom 



^' van Gennep, op. cit., 202 sq. 



" E. Seler, in Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology, no. 28, 

 p. 16; Sahagun, Histoire generale des choses de la Nouvelle Espagne, 

 Paris, 1880, pp. Ixvi sq., 77, 164 ; J. de Acosta, Natural and Moral History 

 of the Indies, edited by C. R. Markham, London, 1880, ii. 392. 



149 



