Christmas
How was ‘Christmas’ celebrated in the ancient Aztec and Mayan communities?
In America, Christmas was known long after the arrival of the Spaniards, but before that, interesting rituals took place.
Christmas arrived in Mexico with the Spaniards, but what celebration took place in the country before?
Christmas is the main Christian festival, as it marks the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, the word “Christmas” is derived from the Latin ‘nativitas’ or birth, and although there is no certainty about the exact date of Jesus Christ in the Middle Ages, the date of December 24 was set so that his followers would move away from pagan celebrations, in this case, linked to the winter solstice and various reasons.
Well, it’s for this reason that in 1492 this celebration was not known in America. In fact, it was on December 25 of that same year that the first Christmas was celebrated in Latin America and was called ‘La Hispaniola,’ the island that currently comprises Haiti and the Dominican Republic, shortly after the Europeans discovered that America existed.
What was celebrated in America, in some communities that make up the territory we now call Mexico, has everything to do with the winter solstice. In fact, it was believed that Huitzilopochtli reached the farthest point from Earth during this period, so he withdrew towards Mictlán, the underworld of the dead, to be reborn on December 24 from the Earth, represented by the goddess Coatlicue, mother of the hummingbird.
This rebirth of the sun occurred in Malinalco, today the capital of the State of Mexico, where celebrations were held to welcome the new cycle. To date, the story of the Mexicas celebrating the birth of Huitzilopochtli, on the same dates that the West celebrates the birth of Jesus, is more or less known. You can read more about it here.
Mayan celebrations
As for the celebration of the Mayans, it is a bit more complex, as they had a deeper knowledge of astronomy, and the Winter Solstice represented the fourth season of the 365-day agricultural year. Thus, the phenomenon of the winter solstice was a great gateway to the spiritual world and the universe, being a day greatly celebrated for the energies emitted on that special day.
The winter solstice indicated the birth of the new sun, the arrival of winter, and the season to let the land rest for its next agricultural cycle. That is why the Mayan cities were built with an orientation, shape, play of light and shadow, and with great precision to know the temporal location of the calendar, with the best example being the Kukulcán pyramid.
Today, you can admire the phenomenon of the winter solstice in some of the most important archaeological sites of Mayan culture on the Yucatán Peninsula such as Chichén Itzá. By observing the west face of the Kukulcán pyramid, you will see the sun rise right at the edge of the building. From three in the afternoon, you will notice that the pyramid “splits” in two: the north and east faces will be in darkness while the south and west faces will be illuminated. This same luminous division of the temples is observed in Uxmal and other sites in Central America.
At the Mayapán archaeological site, as well as in Dzibilchaltún and Oxkintok, what was known as Nitz Upam q’ij paxkua or winter solstice used to be celebrated, according to the website we mayatecu. But as happened with many other celebrations, when the Catholics learned about this festivity, it was prohibited as it was considered a pagan rite, and they gradually established the nativity, building Christian temples over the Mayan temples.
