........The cultural history of the Bulgarians treasures the memory of a specific and ancient cultural activity - the masquerade games. The importance of this activity could be compared to nothing less than the discovery of fire. The skill of masquerading was mastered when people found out that they could perform, covered by a mask. Today it is hard to grasp the cultural and heuristic uniqueness of this act. In the distant past masquerading was practiced not only for fun but as a sort of social game. It was through this game that man succeeded in getting himself settled in his world, thus turning this world from Nature to Culture. It was with the help of the mask that man ordered his relations with the Macro and Microcosm, presenting them in the form of images of Good and Evil, of man's fertility and woman's fecundity. These images or ethno stereotypes may still seem familiar, but their substantial meaning eludes us now.

........Within classical Bulgarian folklore tradition unmarried lads and lasses as well as married women dressed up on the most "female" of festivities, called "Babinden" (the Midwife's Day, January 8), and at wedding ceremonies too (the so-called "Sweet Brandy Gatherings"). They used to say that a lad who had not taken part in a masquerade was not eligible for marriage. The masquerade games in Bulgaria have various names: "Koukeri" (Mummers), "Sirviskare", "Mechkare", "Startzi". These games are organized on different occasions: on "Koleda" (Christmas) and "Sourva" (New Year's Day), during "Todorova Nedelya" (Todor's Week, the first week after Shrove Sunday) as well as at the end of summer as a harvest festival. Participants in masquerades dress up in goat or sheepskin and put on huge masks (or semi-masks), called "faces", "mugs" or "images". Different roles are performed in the masquerade games - those of the mummer-granny, the chieftain, the bridegroom and the bride, the gypsy and the gypsy woman, all of them being ancient mythological characters, telling of, or rather acting out scenes from the mythological everyday life of the past, when the world was created and organized by the "Patriarch" - the "Man" who first ploughed Mother Earth and took his beloved one to wife. The masquerade games today have acquired the flavour of entertainment and are looked upon mostly as a popular theater, having the inherent elements of the comedy of country life.

........Nowadays it is at the Masquerade Games Festival, one of the most colorful cultural events in Bulgaria that one can enjoy the unbelievable diversity of the traditional masks, feel the incredible rhythm of the drums, rattles and bells that the masked performers are decorated with (so that the noise would chase away the evil forces from the fertile earth). It is only natural for this festival to take place every two or three years in the town of Pernik, for it is in the Pernik region that men have observed the ancient tradition of dressing up and putting on masks on New Years Day and on the eve of Sourva (January 14, old style) to drive away evil in the expectation of good days to come...