While J. Schmilg argued that these memorial days become festivals by being incorporated and recorded in Megillat Taanit, later scholarship has concluded that the days had been known and celebrated by the people long before that time (as Schmilg himself was forced to admit in the case of some of them). The celebration of these festivals or semi-festivals evidently existed as early as the time of Judith. The compilers of Megillat Taanit merely listed the memorial days, and at the same time determined that the less important should be celebrated by a mere suspension of fasting, while public mourning was to be forbidden on the more important ones.