of the Japanese new year's day.[403] Of Assyrian observances
of the day little is known, but at Babylon it was celebrated with great
pomp, and with it was connected the conception of the determination of
human fortunes for the year by Marduk, the chief deity of the city.[404]
The late Old Testament ritual makes it a taboo day (first day of the
seventh month, September-October); no servile work is to be done,
trumpets are to be blown (apparently to mark its solemnity), and a
special sacrifice is to be offered;[405] in post-Biblical times the
feature of the divine assignment of fates (probably adopted from the
Babylonians) appears. The old Roman religious year began with the
kalends of March, when the sacred fire of Vesta was renewed, a procedure
obviously intended to introduce a new era; on the later civil new year's
day (kalends of January) presents were exchanged,[406] a custom
everywhere relatively late, a feature in the gradual secularization of
ceremonies.

+215+. Solar festivals, as such, are less prominent than the lunar in
religious ritual. Though the sun was a great god widely worshiped, it
was little used in the construction of early calendars. Primitive
astronomy knew hardly anything of solstices and equinoxes, and where
these are noted in the more advanced rituals, they appear to be
attachments to observances founded on other considerations--so the Roman
Saturnalia, celebrated near the winter solstice, and apparently the
plebeian festival of the summer solstice attached to the worship of
Fortuna; and the same thing is probably true of the Semitic and Greek
festivals that occurred near the equinoxes and solstices.[407]

+216+. Elaborate solstitial ceremonies are practiced by the North
American Pueblos.[408] A well-developed solar system of festivals
existed in Peru, where the sun was the central object of worship;
equinoxes and solstices were observed with great ceremonies, and
especially at the summer solstice the rising of the sun was hailed with
popular rejoicing as a sign that the favor of the deity would be
extended to the nation.[409] Similar ceremonies may have existed in
Mexico and elsewhere, but in general, as is remarked above, the
astronomical feature at solar epochs yielded to other associations.
Occasional festivals occur in connection with the worship of stars
(especially the morning star);[410] the Pleiades are objects of
observation among some low tribes, and in some cases (Society Islands,