The Kalibo Santo Niño—Ati-Atihan Festival, also simply called Ati-Atihan Festival, is a Philippine festival held annually in January in honor of the Santo Niño (Holy Child or Infant Jesus) in several towns of the province of Aklan, Panay Island. The biggest celebration is held during the third Sunday of January in the town of Kalibo, the province's capital. The name Ati-Atihan means "to imitate the Ati people". The festival consists of religious processions and street-parades, showcasing themed floats, dancing groups wearing colorful costumes, marching bands, and people sporting face and body paints. The street parade is known as Sadsad, which is also what the locals call their way of dancing where the foot is momentarily dragged along the ground in tune to the beat played by the marching bands. It has inspired other Philippine Festivals such as Dinagyang of Iloilo and Sinulog of Cebu, thus, it is known as the "Mother of All Philippine Festivals." History The original celebration was known as the Fiesta de Santo Niño, which dates back to at least the 17th century. It was part of the Catholic "fiesta system" employed by the Spanish colonial government to reinforce the reducciones policy that aimed to resettle natives on planned settlements built around a local church. In the 1950s, the festival, along with similar fiestas around the country celebrating the Santo Niño (like the Sinulog) increasingly began to resemble the Brazilian Carnival and the New Orleans Mardi Gras, incorporating music, street dancing, and body painting. By the 1960s, the festival became even more commercialized as the Philippine Department of Tourism heavily promoted local festivals to national prominence. The festival now included elaborate exotic costumes (inspired by tribal attire from Papua New Guinea, Africa, and India). It culminated in 1972, when the festival's name was officially changed to Ati-Atihan. The festivity is claimed to be originally a native animist celebration of the anito (ancestor spirits), to which Spanish missionaries gradually added a Christian meaning. The festival is also linked to the epic Maragtas. The epic claims that a group of 10 Malay chieftains, led by Datu Puti, fled the island of Borneo in the 13th century and landed on the island of Panay. Datu Puti made a trade with the Ati people and purchased the lowlands for a golden salakot, brass basins and bales of cloth. They gave a very long necklace to the wife of the Ati chieftain.