COLORFUL PHILIPPINE FESTIVITIES

SINULOG FESTIVAL

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The Sinulog is an annual festival held on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City, Philippines. The festival honors the child Jesus, known as the Santo Niño, patron of the city of Cebu. It is a dance ritual that commemorates the Filipino people's pagan past and their acceptance of Christianity.

The festival features a street parade with participants in bright-colored costumes dancing to the rhythm of drums, trumpets and native gongs. Smaller versions of the festival are held in various parts of the province, also to celebrate and honor the Santo Niño



The Sinulog celebration traditionally lasts for nine days, culminating on the final day with the Sinulog Grand Parade. The day before the parade, the Fluvial Procession is held at dawn with the Santo Niño carried on a pump boat from Mandaue City to Cebu City, decked with hundreds of flowers and candles. The procession ends at the Basilica where a re-enactment of the Christianizing of Cebu is performed. In the afternoon, a more solemn procession takes place along the major streets of the city, which last for hours due to large crowd participating in the event.
On the feast day at the Basilica, a Pontifical Mass is celebrated by the Cardinal with the assistance of several bishops of Cebu. Most devotees go to the Basilica to attend the mass before heading out to the streets to watch the parade

Since 1521, devotion to the Santo Niño has grown and has taken root in Filipino popular piety, particularly in the Visayas; pilgrims from different parts of Cebu and the rest of the Philippines make their yearly journey to the Basilica to take part in the procession and fiesta. Starting in 1980, the Cebu City government organized the Sinulog Mardi Gras and eventually gave incentives to dance groups.
The first Sinulog parade was held in 1980, organized by David Odilao, then Regional Director of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Development. The parade was composed of students dressed in moro-moro costumes, dancing the Sinulog to the beating of drums.
The idea caught and thus, under the direction of the Cebu City Mayor Florentino Solon with the help of several influential Cebuanos, Odilao turned over the Sinulog project to the Cebu City Historical Committee under Kagawad Jesus Garcia. It was the task of the Committee to conceptualize the Sinulog festival and make it into a yearly event from then on.
In 1981 the following year, the concept of the Sinulog Parade was actualized, involving practically every sector in the Cebuano community. Marking its difference from another popular festival, the Ati-Atihan in Aklan, the Sinulog focuses not on the ritual itself but on the historical aspects of the dance, which, as it has been said, represents the link between the country's pagan past and Christian present

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