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A 'Chocalehiro' dressed with his typical outfit and carrying a characteristic and often ancient mask poses for a picture during a winter masquerade gathering in Salsas, Portugal, Saturday, Jan. 7, 2017. These solstice festivals, which have their origins in early Celtic cultures and/or the later pre-Christianized Roman beliefs, persist named after ‘masquerades’ with mostly young men dressed with wild and colorful costumes made of colored woolen quilts and donning brass, including leather or wooden masks becoming a popular fixture for celebration of winter solstice in Spain and Portugal, with each country, and each village, having its own strange and unique way of doing it, Many of these masquerades are of ancient origin and can often be traced to pre-Christian Celtic and often pre-Roman traditions around the renewal of fertility and life and an end of winter.