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Tradition and Ritual of Chocolate
Since cacao was such an important consumption item, it constituted the base of many Central American rituals. Chocolate was the ceremonial drink of the Aztecs as well as the Mayans and it was not only served in banquets but in births, puberty rituals, weddings and funerals. The Aztecs used to give their prisoners chocolate because they thought this would turn their hearts into chocolate. This was then ripped away from them and given and offered to Ekchuah, the god of the cacao plantations, and to other cacao gods.
Planting the grains consisted in a special ritual of which we can find vivid expressions of from the historian of the nineteenth century H. H. Bancroft who said that before planting a seed they would celebrate by doing a party of honor to their gods Ekchuah, Chac and Hobnil, who were their patron deities. In order to give solemnity to the act, everyone would go to the plantation and there they would sacrifice a dog that had a cacao colored spot on its skin. After this they would burn incense for their idols and then gave each one of the functionaries a branch from the cacao tree. A lot of emphasis was placed on fertility in the plantation rituals, as Bancroft also said that the best grains of the seed were exposed to the moonlight for four nights… those that labored the earth had to sleep separate from their wives and concubines for several days so that on the night before sowing the seeds, they were able to give into their passions to the full; it is even said that there were certain designated people that actually engaged in the sexual act at the same time the first seeds were being buried in the ground.
The Spanish, who were very superstitious people, considered that it was essential to continue with, at least, some of these customs and attributed their initial failure of the cacao plantations in Jamaica to the fact that the English did not bother to carry out any rituals of any sort.
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