Journal Anthropological Institute, July-Dec., 1904, p. 329.
Westermarck (Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, pp. 283-9) shows how widespread is the custom of setting apart a periodical rest day.
A. E. Crawley, The Mystic Rose, pp. 273 et seq., Crawley brings into association with this function of great festivals the custom, found in some parts of the world, of exchanging wives at these times. "It has nothing whatever to do with the marriage system, except as breaking it for a season, women of forbidden degree being lent, on the same grounds as conventions and ordinary relations are broken at festivals of the Saturnalia type, the object being to change life and start afresh, by exchanging every thing one can, while the very act of exchange coincides with the other desire, to weld the community together" (Ib., p. 479).
See "The Analysis of the Sexual Impulse" in vol. iii of these Studies.