In this ambitious book, Allen Christenson argues that contemporary Tz'utujil Maya ritual practices during Semana Santa (Holy Week) preserve elements of the ancient “world renewal” ceremonies of the lowland and highland Maya. Christenson attempts this by first reviewing accounts of rituals from Yucatan and the Maya highlands, and the role of Easter in the Spanish conquest, before devoting several chapters to ethnographic descriptions of contemporary Tz'utujil ceremonies. It is commendable that Christenson attempts to historicize the claims of continuity between precolumbian year-end (Wayeb’) rites and Holy Week in Santiago Atitlán that have been put forward by scholars such as E. Michael Mendelson (1957, 1959) for over half a century. Unfortunately the lack of a well-defined theoretical and methodological approach limits how convincing it is as a work of ethnohistory.

The book comprises an introduction and 10 chapters. It has no endnotes that would allow further theoretical or methodological explanations without encumbering the main text. The introduction defines the object of the book as Maya “world renewal” ceremonies, described as those through which ritual practitioners “rebirth the world,” especially “at critical points during the calendar year” (1). Discussion of such world renewal ceremonies will be familiar to a Mesoamericanist audience, but Christenson doesn't explicitly place his work in dialogue with any academic theories of ritual or syncretism. One reason this is so problematic is that there is nothing exclusively Maya about world renewal ceremonies so broadly defined. Ceremonial elements such as the new fire, sacrifice, and “world trees” are hardly unique to Mesoamerica either. This limits the author's ability in many cases to demonstrate historical continuity or purposeful syncretism as more plausible interpretations of a Holy Week rite than acculturation or localization within a global religion.

Following the introduction, the first two chapters describe precolumbian world renewal ceremonies in lowland Yucatan and the Maya Highlands. These descriptions are derived primarily from the accounts of colonial Spanish clergymen, supplemented by colonial Mayan language texts and interpretations of precolumbian iconography. The author admirably assembles and discusses selections from the reports of numerous missionary priests, especially for the Highlands. These works, by the likes of Las Casas, Remesal and Vico, are not widely available in English translation, and the author does an excellent job of locating each work within the missionaries’ biographies.

How this substantial documentary material is analyzed is problematic at times, with colonial reports of Maya belief and practice not subjected to adequate criticism. For example, we are told that “in the late Post-Classic (AD 1250–1524), cross-shaped tree stones called yax che'el kab (first tree of the world) were set up as markers” (52). Although Maya cosmological tree symbolism dates back to Preclassic times, the term yax che'el kab does not appear in the known epigraphic record. Rather it appears in colonial documents, especially Christian texts where it is the Tree of Eden (e.g. Mark Christensen's The Teabo Manuscript 2016, 50). Even the ceiba tree (yax che) of the Dresden Codex New Year's pages is just one of many different kinds of trees associated with the cardinal directions in colonial Maya ritual texts. Over the past decade, ethnohistorians have documented just how extensive and subtle the impact of the Spanish colonial project was on Maya space, conduct, and even language (e.g., Hanks’ 2010 work Converting Words). Among contemporary ethnohistorians, most arguments of historical continuity require a more explicit critical apparatus than Christenson's work provides here.

The third chapter explores a linkage between the timing of Spanish military campaigns and Easter, followed by a fourth chapter on accounts of post-conquest world renewal ceremonies. Christenson argues that the Maya interpreted the Spanish conquest much like the period endings of the indigenous calendar and “as a result, Easter came to replace the ancient Maya Wayeb’ observances as the focus for ceremonies meant to regenerate the world” (111). Given the importance of the ancient calendars from the earliest epigraphic records to contemporary K'iche’ ajq'ijab’, many Mayanists would expect a substantive discussion of the syncretism of the indigenous calendars with the Spanish Christian ones. If Wayeb’ rites were merged with Easter, one could be (and indeed would need to be) very precise about when this occurred. This is because Easter is a moveable feast, and so Holy Week rarely overlaps with the five “nameless” days of Mayan language speaking groups’ calendars. In Breath on the Mirror (1993:221–222), Dennis Tedlock notes this correlation possibly occurred in the late eighteenth century. Surprisingly, Christenson's argument focuses almost exclusively on the Spanish Christian dates of conquest and early Colonial-era events, after which “the Maya probably adopted the Christian symbol of the cross willingly as a symbol of regeneration that fit well with their own indigenous beliefs” (127). If in the aftermath of military conquest the Wayeb’ rites were replaced by Easter regardless of the latter's date in the ancient calendar, would it not be better to characterize this transition as acculturation or localization rather than syncretism?

Although his principal argument is a historical one, over half of Christenson's work is an excellent ethnography of Santiago Atitlán's Holy Week rites based on the author's decades of research in highland Guatemala. Chapters five through nine each describe and analyze the Tz'utujil ceremonies of a different weekday (Monday to Friday), with a final tenth chapter devoted to the aftermath of Holy Week and concluding remarks. The lore of contemporary traditionalists surrounding Rilaj Mam in Christenson's narrative and photographs are among the most evocative descriptions of these rites ever published. The analysis, however, is more problematic. When the author asserts that one element or another of modern Tz'utujil rites are “related” (301) or “analogous” (311) to the Dresden Codex New Year's pages or Bishop Landa's accounts of Maya rituals in Yucatan four centuries earlier, what is meant here? The structure of the book suggests direct historical continuity, but in most cases the reader is provided intimation rather than evidence. The incompleteness of the epigraphic and historical record may make this unavoidable, but the lack of an explicit theory of syncretism limits the plausibility of the claims of this ambitious work.