The Sinulog festival is one of the grandest and most colorful festivals in the Philippines. The main festival is held each year on the third Sunday of January in Cebu City to honor the Santo Niño, or the child Jesus, who used to be the patron saint of the whole province of Cebu (since in the Catholic faith Jesus is not a saint, but God). It is essentially a dance ritual which remembers the Filipino people's pagan past and their acceptance of Christianity.
The Sinulog Festival is the biggest and most popular festival on the beautiful palm-fringed island of Cebu in the Philippines. People wearing phenomenal costumes of feathers and bright silks in a bewildering array of colours dance for hours in a Grand Parade. Masks and horns, traditional instruments and the famous Sinulog dance take over the city.
On Sinulog Sunday (traditionally the third Sunday in January), the city's inhabitants converge for a grand solemn procession. The parade is in honour of the Santo Niño and devotees keep up a raucous chorus of Pit Señor! (Long live the Christ Child!), accompanied by an incessant drum beat.
The preceding week, elderly ladies dance the Sinulog, a sinuous and curvy series of movements said to reflect the river's eddies and currents as it flows through the city. To see them dancing, head to Magellan's Cross and the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño early in the morning.
Parade and Festival
The highlight of the yearly Sinulog celebration, which is the grand parade, is the climax of a series of cultural happenings within the week ending on the feast of the Señor Santo Niño, the third Sunday of January.
At the beginning of the project in 1981, the sole cultural celebration was the grand parade and Mardi Gras. But as part of its development, other activities have since been made to revolve around the day of the Sinulog parade and the feast. For a week, cultural presentations are produced by school students, office groups and members of the local performing arts association.
The Fluvial Parade
The main affairs directly conveying the themes of the feast are the fluvial procession, the solemn traditional procession emanating from the San Augustin church portal, and the grand parade.
The fluvial procession is a reenactment of the coming of Magellan to the old Cebu Village, in particular his landing at the old beach which is now the heart of the city. Over 440 years ago, the Spaniards led by Magellan landed in the Cebu village of Rajah Humabon on April17, 1521. On the shore he planted he planted a cross which is said to be extant up to his time. Today, the city’s busiest street thoroughfare, Magallanes, is found where the cross is still preserved and now venerated as a relic. This historical chapter, Magellan’s coming, is reenacted as the advent of the new faith.
Another major activity is the traditional solemn procession on the eve of the feast held yearly for centuries. The Holy Image is carried around the city once a year as the climax of the religious celebration. In 1565, it was during Legazpi’s governorship of the village when the Image was moved in a first procession as a thanksgiving of its finding. It was enshrined and adored in a Holy Mass officiated by the first missionary in the archipelago, Father Andres Urdaneta.
Grand Parade
The focus of the cultural celebration, the parade, fills the city streets with color and sounds of the festival. Hundreds take part in the parade while thousands of Cebuanos go out to the streets to watch. The crowd is lined in the sidewalk, packed in high buildings, other structures and trees for a vantage view.
Participants in the parade enter as contestants for whom there are prizes in several categories. So they take part with a mind to be one of the best in color, performance, and symbolism. The parade becomes a vehicle for the symbolists, artists and visualitis for the who have a number of themes to chose from, all related to the origin of the Señor and the early history of Cebu.
Historical Presentations
A greater number of the parade contestants explore the theme of Christianization. Any part of the historical evangelization becomes a favorite theme. Magellan’s short stay in Humabon’s kingdom in 1521 was full of events which today have come down to the present Cebuano generation as good history to dramatize in the Sinulog. There is the giving of the Flemish statuette of the Holy Child Jesus, Señor del Santo Niño, as an oft-repeated historical theme. The baptism of Humabon and His Queen and their subjects has become poignant reenactment in the Sinulog parade. Even the coming of Legazpi four decades after Magellan’s visit is pregnant with historic points very tempting to parade participants to take up as a theme. The finding of the Image and the procession are usually considered challenging themes to explore.
On the other hand, it is normally hard to resists the impact in terms of number and sounds achieved by groups who participate as marching, thundering Spanish soldiers or native warriors simulating the 1521 Battle of Mactan.
Colorful Floats
Floats accentuate many point of the long parade and take up the best attention of the crowd for their bulk, color and drama. Put up generally by participants from the commercial sector, floats are fashioned aesthetically to convey the Sinulog theme in several symbolic expressions, without missing the chance to make a commercial message.
Street Performance
Most of the contingents participate as dancers in colorful costumes and precise choreography. The Spanish soldier’s uniform and the native warrior’s exotic headgear are favorite costumes, as well as the native floral dresses for the women dancers. All the dances move along the beat of the Sinulog which has two step forward and one step backward.
The Dancing Giants
Barangays in the city take part in the parade using the local figure of the higante. HIGANTES are huge reproduction of gleeful, macabre-looking imagined or copied characters made out of paper mache. In the Sinulog parade, the barangays can put up as many of these paper giants as they can produce which serve as the central attraction in their contingents. Around the gigantic paper characters normally frolic along in the parade the other barangay residents who trail behind in Mardi-Gras style.
The Finale
At the end of the grand parade, the final event place at nightfall when the time is perfect for a special program and a Mardi Gras later. The big program is usually star-studded with invited cinematic personalities to grace and it is to salute the public and the Balikbayans who come to share the holiday with Cebuanos.
*****************
PHOTOS
http://youngdiplomats.zsei.info/photo/thumbnails.php?album=24 
