Beneath White Mountain in New Mexico, is the Mescalero Apache reservation. Every Fourth of July the Mescalero Apache hold a coming-of-age ritual, intended to prepare girls for the trials of .

This year, Dachina Cochise, a 13-year-old, passed through ancient tests of strength, endurance, and character that made her a woman over the span of four days.

Dachina's mother, Melette, had spent more than a year preparing for the week of . Family members and friends came to help her feed and care for more than fifty guests. The family's most important task was a medicine woman for Dachina, who would instruct the girl how to be a Apache woman.

During the four days, Dachina moved through the of life—infant, child, adolescent, and woman, which ended with an all-night dance that tested her endurance. These four days meant little sleep, hardly any food and the need to set aside emotion.

Everything began with the rising of the morning star. After Dachina was blessed and dusted with pollen, a symbol of fertility, she joined the other girls in a tent-like structure built by their relatives. As their ancestors had one, the girls ran toward the rising sun and then circled around a basket, which was filed with ceremonial objects. With darkness near, girls danced beside the ceremonial fire. They danced all night long, much of the time hidden in the big tepee. On the final day, Dachina and the other girls to the hill to pray to the mountain spirits for a long and successful life. When a medicine man greeted the sun, a signal that the final test was near, the girls' faces were painted with white clay the goddess. On their last circuit around the basket, the girls wiped away the symbolic clay. After everything was complete, Dachina's community gathered, acknowledging that this girl earned the right to live as a woman of the tribe.

As an Apache woman, Dachina serves as a symbol of her culture, and protecting a way of life that's threatened with extinction.

Nowruz means "new day" in Persian and is the most important festival of the year in Iran. It is also celebrated across the Middle East and1and dates back at least 3, 000 years. The holiday has2over the thousands of years and different3have kept or developed different traditions, as well as adding new ones. But wherever it is observed, it celebrates the4message of rebirth and renewal.

Nowruz5the spring equinox (春分), when night and day are of equal length. This usually620 or 21 March. It's the day when winter changes into spring in the northern hemisphere (北半球), and it feels like a new beginning. In Iran it is7by four days of public holidays, and schools and universities close for two weeks.

People start their8for the festivals several weeks beforehand. They clean their homes from top to bottom,9carpets and curtains. Everyone in the family helps out. Anything broken is repaired or replaced and the house is decorated with flowers. By doing this spring cleaning, people wash away the bad things from the previous year and prepare for better things to come in the new year.

People put a special table in their homes, where they place small dishes holding seven10tools and spices. The names of these foods all start with the letter "s" in Persian and so the table is called the "seven s's (haft-seen). The dishes generally contain wheat or bean sprouts (sabze), vinegar (serke), apples (sib), garlic (sir), a wheat-based pudding called samanu, a red spice called sumac, and senjed. a kind of wild olive which is common. In Iranian culture, the seven s's represent life, love, health and prosperity.

What makes a tradition—and why do people keep traditions alive? Photographer Daniel Ochoa de Olza has spent his career documenting various Spanish traditions. His work on a bullfighter Juan Jose Padilla won a World Press Photo Award in 2013. This year he presents the portraits from Las Mayas.

Las Mayas, a tradition in the Spanish village of Colmenar Viejo, has been around for many years to mark the beginning of new season. Each spring, festival officials keep a running list of girls typically between the ages of seven and eleven. However, only about four or five of them will have the honor of being chosen as the year's stars of "Las Mayas".

There are no written rules—everything has been passed down orally from generation to generation. The participating families are honored if their daughter is selected from the dozens of young girls who apply to participate in this local tradition with ancient roots. They spend weeks building and decorating altars （祭坛）with fresh flowers gathered from the surrounding countryside. On the festival day, the Mayas, dressed in costumes, are to sit perfectly still on the altars on the streets of the village tor two hours as the people living in the village pass by, admiring and commenting on the displays. A band of musicians move from altar to altar, and 10 to 15 other girls wearing long while dresses and black jackets serve as the attendants, asking for coin from passers-by in exchange for cleaning their jackets with brushes. For the entire day, the Mayas are the center of attention. After the festival, the Mayas come down and head to church to attend evening mass with community.

The magic of being a Maya tends to fade as the girls grow beyond childhood. As teenagers, onetime Mayas tend to laugh off their past participation, projecting an air of coolness by denying their youthful enthusiasm. And yet, as the former Mayas have daughters of their own, the tradition continues.

"The pictures are very simple," Daniel says, "but it's another way of telling the story of my country. " The Maya girls create the compositions in which they star. While the portraits are not photographically daring, they, in some sense, make us aware that even in one's own country, there are always customs and traditions to discover—practices with vigor and beauty. "We are all doing strange things in all parts of the world, " Daniel continues. "And I find it interesting in the 21st Century we are still doing these festivals—it is a way to see where we are going and where we have come from—looking back to look forward. "