New Fire ceremony

The Aztecs wanted to symbolically and literally purify and "renew" their lives for the beginning of the new 52 year cycle.

In fact it was an ancient and widespread ritual in Postclassic Central Mexico that the Aztecs appropriated to their own society.

[5] It was believed that during these days the world was in grave danger because of the instability inherent in the shift from one cycle to another.

[3][5] At sunset on the last day of the year, which always happened during the birth of Huitzilopochtli, the day-sign "1 Tecpatl" of the year "2 Acatl,"[6] a procession of priests from the fire cult of Huehueteotl walked from the ceremonial center of Tenochtitlan across the eastbound causeway towards a mountain called Huixachtlan on the eastern bank of Lake Texcoco close to Colhuacan.

From this bonfire torches were carried by runners to every ward of the city where the temple hearths would be lit.

People would also often throw themselves into the fire to sacrifice or blister themselves; among this, there would be great celebrating and no one would sleep all throughout the night.

[8] The position of every part of the ceremony was carefully chosen to either mirror what was happening in the sky or to please the gods or both.

[7] The Binding of the Years refers to what was originally thought to be a Teotihuacan idea of the end of a cylindrical cycle.

[3] It has been proposed that archaeological evidence of New Fire ceremonies can be found in the shape of dumps of pottery and households utensils discarded in the initial stage of the celebration.

The idea was first proposed by George C. Vaillant in the 1930s but his model was criticized as theoretically unfounded and abandoned.

In 2001, Elson and Smith rethought the proposal in light of the findings of several ceramic dumps that seemed to match the idea of what remains of New Fire ceremony would look like.