The Mayan Glyph for Uayeb

In the Mayan Haab calendar, there are eighteen months of twenty days each. Being extraordinary astronomers, the Mayans saw that they were five days short of a full year. They made up for it by adding a nineteenth month consisting of only five days. This period they called uayeb or wayeb.

According to La Vaca Independiente, this short month had some interesting features:

Despite the fact that these days share the calendar with 18 other periods lasting 20 days each, the Uayeb had a bad reputation among the Maya people. According to writings found during the colonial period, these days were considered black periods in which the universe had released dark forces and therefore they didn’t share in the blessings of time.

In the Songs of Dzibalche, a codex found in 1942, a series of allusions to the Uayeb were discovered. These expressed the discomfort the days caused the Maya people:

The days of weeping, the days of evil/ The devil is loose, hell is open/ There is no goodness, only evil… the month of nameless days has come/ Days of pain, days of evil, the black days.

Several theories describe how the Maya passed through such dark times. Some specialists maintain that during these periods they stayed in their homes and washed their hair. Others claim they undertook great processions in thanks for what they’d experienced during the year. One thing that’s certain is that the word Uayeb could be translated as “bewitched staircase.”

Of course, the ancient Mayan uayeb occurred during the summer, around July or August. But because our calendar year ends on December 31, I’ve moved it to the period between Christmas and New Years Eve, where it seeme to make more sense.

I don’t know how you plan to celebrate it, but for myself, I’m going to wash my hair while I still have some left.