Chicchan is the fifth of the twenty day signs of the Tzolk'in, the 260-day sacred count of the Maya, still kept by highland daykeepers and reconstructed for the Classic period from the inscriptions. Recorded here by its Yucatec name, Chicchan, it corresponds to the day Kan in the living K'iche' tradition. Its imagery is the serpent, the celestial snake and the life-force it embodies, vitality, instinct, and the coursing energy that the Maya associated with the movement of the body and the sky. In the directional scheme that runs through the twenty signs it belongs to the east and the colour red. These are the meanings the Maya calendrical tradition carries for the day, framed as that tradition understands them; the serpent is among the most persistent images across Maya art and cosmology.
Chicchan is the fifth of the twenty Tzolk'in day signs; the living K'iche' tradition knows the corresponding day, somewhat confusingly for readers of the Yucatec system, as Kan, an unrelated homophone of the Yucatec fourth day sign's own name, again illustrating that the Yucatec and K'iche' day-name sets, though positionally aligned, are independent vocabularies rather than direct translations of one another. Chicchan's imagery is the serpent, associated in Maya iconography with life-force, with the sky and with rain-bringing power, the feathered or celestial serpent recurring as a major figure across Mesoamerican religious art generally. In the directional scheme, Chicchan reopens the cycle at east and red, the same direction and colour as Imix, marking the start of the second of the five four-day directional sets that structure the twenty signs.