Xiuhpohualli\Count of Days

There is no universal or provable 100% correct alignment between the Mexica Xiuhpohualli and the Gregorian calendar that all of our scholars can agree upon. A quick search will display multiple calendars. I know of 7. Different Xiuhpohualli reconstructions use different starting points for their correlations, such as the Alfonso Caso, Rodríguez Cortés, Malmström, Bricker, Tedlock, etc, and some combine them.
To read more about the different correlations click here: Azteca/Mexica Calendar Correlations: the Good, the Bad, and the Completely Useless

I follow the Mexica New Year that starts at the spring equinox.

With my limited knowledge of my ancestral ways, this is the most astronomically grounded estimation that aligns the spring equinox as the starting point of the new year. And one that is based on the sacred and natural rhythms of life

The spring equinox is a sacred event for all Anahuac civilizations. This day is significant, our Anahuac ancestors built large, beautiful, intricate, but more importantly, functional structures that align with the equinox light phenomena (e.g., temple alignments at Chichén Itzá, Malinalco, Templo Mayor, Teotihuacan, etc).

Sacredness of creation surrounds the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. The spring equinox is known as a day of renewal/rebirth. It makes sense to many that the Spring Equinox would be the rebirth/start of the Xiuhpohualli. Other cultures also celebrate this date as their New Year.

While this is not “proof” in the European sense, it holds ceremonial and cyclical continuity, more importantly, one that is sacred. For these reasons, I choose this path, I walk in a rhythm that honors the sun, the ancestors, the sacred hoop of time. One that fits with known agricultural rhythms and could be the most natural and ceremonial alignment we can make today, based on the information we have. Please take into consideration, I might be wrong.

Why don’t we know?
The Spanish invaders destroyed nearly all Indigenous codices and calendars (especially under Fray Diego de Landa), death was the sentence imposed on those whose function was to track the day-to-day events in Anahuac. Combined with the violent imposition of the Gregorian calendar has left us with fragments of written history, missionary records, and surviving oral traditions. There is an abundance of surviving knowledge about our ancestral ways. Unfortunately, it’s not enough for us to achieve a consensus amongst ourselves.

The Julian calendar, used by the Europeans at the time of the invasion (pre-1582), was replaced by the Gregorian calendar. As a fix to their faulty system of organizing days, a shift of 10 days, later becoming 13 days, had to occur. August 13, 1521, on the Julian calendar is not the same as “August 13” today (people often forget or ignore this change when retrofitting known Mexica dates). While these 13 days can easily be worked into any equation, there are more unknowns we cannot be certain of.

Here’s why we can’t be 100% certain:
A) Destruction of records (as mentioned before), and what survives of these fragments has been filtered through the Spanish Christian worldview and Western-minded archaeologists and scholars, who have historically been extremely dismissive, hostile, racist, and violent toward anything that is not them.

B) Different Interpretations by scholars:
Again, as mentioned earlier, different reconstructions use different start dates for when the New Fire ceremony occurred, and some use other events. There is no consensus about which one of these methods is most accurate.

Why not use astronomical events?
Eclipses were recorded in both European and Indigenous records. Unfortunately, eclipses are localized. A solar eclipse visible in Anahuac may not align with an eclipse in Europe.
Eclipses aren’t spaced evenly like equinoxes or solstices. When considering their occurrences at specific locations on Earth, such as Anahuac vs. Europe, how often they happen at a given continent can vary.

Comets?
Comets like Halley’s Comet were recorded in both European and Indigenous records. There are not enough of our fragmented records to align both calendar systems.

Solstices and Equinoxes?
These can be used as markers, not to align the calendar systems, but as a starting point for the New Year.

There are other reasons and lots more information, too numerous to publish here. The problem comes back to the lack of consensus amongst our scholars to put this to rest. For me, the equinox is the most astronomically defensible and spiritually meaningful starting point for the New Year.

We can fight, argue, and disparage each other for not using the “correct” calendar. Unless new information is uncovered that can make our fragmented records whole, we may never know. If you are using one, keep using it; if you find one that changes your mind, switch. I don’t see them as right or wrong, but different.

Tell you a story, or is it an analogy? One day in the early 00s (the date isn’t important, the lesson is). My daughter and I were attending a cultural class taught by an elder. He was discussing the colors associated with the 4 directions, which differed from what my elders had taught me and what I had taught my daughter. This upset her, she whispered they were wrong, luckily, no one heard. I informed her that they were not wrong, but different. The importance was not which direction had what color, but the lesson associated with that direction. The class was about the meaning of who we are; the colors and directions differed, but the truth about our strength, ingenuity, the beauty of our arts, the use of ancient wisdom to decolonize, which heals and strengthens us (La Cultura Cura), and our connection to all creation was the true lesson. The colors and directions were points to help us organize these ideas.

My twin daughters, my son, and I know our day signs or tonalli. We are aware that each one is from a different system. By “blood”, I am Totonac and they are Wixárika, and we adopted the Mexica ways, we celebrate all 3. We accept it and move on.

It would be great if we knew with certainty what day it was, but what is important is the messages the elders pass on to us. Historical accounts and dates can be useless to us if we don’t know who we are. Yes, they can tell us where and when we came from. But they cannot tell us who we are as a people. Remembering who we are as a people is what they have tried to destroy for hundreds of years, yet we survive. We may not have our unbroken history, but we have our unbroken hearts that resist.