SINULOG FESTIVAL

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 (Holy Child), patron of the city of Cebu. It is a dance ritual that commemorates the Cebuano people’s pagan origin, 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. There is also a “Sinulog sa Kabataan”, performed by the youths of Cebu a week before the grand parade.


 

 The Sinulog festival is one of the grandest, most distinguished and most colorful festivals in the Philippines. The major 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 fundamentally a dance ritual which remembers the Filipino people's pagan past and their recognition of Christianity.

 The festival features some the country's most colorful displays of ceremony and pageantry: participants clothe in bright-colored costumes dance to the rhythm of drums and native gongs. The streets are generally lined with vendors and pedestrians all wanting to witness the street-dancing. Smaller versions of the festival are also held in different parts of the province, also to celebrate and honor the Santo Niño. There is also a Sinulog sa Kabataan, which is performed by the youths of Cebu a week before the Grand Parade.

Recently, the cultural event has been commercialized as a tourist attraction and instead of traditional street-dancing from locals, Sinulog also came to mean a contest highlighting groups from various parts of the country. The Sinulog Contest is traditionally held in the Cebu City Sports Complex, where most of Cebu's major provincial events are held.

The Festival

The celebration traditionally lasts for nine days, ending on the ninth day when the Sinulog Grand Parade reveals. The day before the parade, the Fluvial Procession, a water-parade, held at dawn from the Mandaue City wharf to Cebu City wharf with the Santo Niño carried on a pump boat decorated with hundreds of flowers and candles. The procession ends at the Basilica where a re-enactment of the Christianizing of Cebu follows. In the afternoon, a more formal procession takes place along the major streets of the city, which last for hours due to large crowd participating in the religious event.

 Background

'Sinulog' comes from the Cebuano adverb sulog which is "like water current movement," which proficiently describes the forward-backward movement of the Sinulog dance. Traditionally, the dance consists of two steps forward and one step backward, done to the sound of the drums. The dance is classified into Sinulog-base, Free-Interpretation, and recently a Latin Category, which most people have argued that it had nothing to do with Sinulog tradition. Candle vendors at the Basilica continue to perform the traditional version of the dance when lighting a candle for the customer, usually accompanied by songs in the native language.

 Historians have renowned that before the first Spaniards came to Cebu, the Sinulog was already danced by the natives in respect of their wooden god called anitos. Then, on April 7, 1521, the Portuguese navigator, Fernando de Magallanes arrived and planted the cross on the shores of Cebu, claiming the territory in the name of the King of Spain. He then offered the image of the child Jesus, the Santo Niño, as baptismal gift to Hara Amihan, wife of Cebu's Rajah Humabon. Hara Amihan was later named, Queen Juana in honor of Juana, Carlos I's mother. Along with the rulers of the island, some 800 natives were also baptized to the Christian faith.

  This event is often used as foundation for most Sinulog dances, which presents the coming of the Spaniards and the presentation of the Santo Niño to the Queen. A famous theme among Sinulog dances is Queen Juana holding the Santo Niño in her arms and using it to bless her people who are often worried by sickness caused by demons and other evil spirits.

The idea caught and thus, under the direction of the Cebu City Mayor Florentino S. Solon with the help of several influential Cebuanos, Odilao turned over the Sinulog project to the Cebu City Historical Committee under Kagawad Jesus B. Garcia, Jr.. 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.

The committee (Cebu City Historical Committee), which was responsible for the conceptualization of the Sinulog as a provincial event, decided to accept a logo for the Sinulog to identify it as an institutionalized yearly event. They turned to the coat of arms of the Santo Niño which consisted of a two-headed hawk that was the mark of the ruling House of Habsburg in Europe. The symbol stand for the twin purpose of the Habsburg dynasty as "Champion of Catholicism and Defender of the Faith." At the time when Spain sent expeditions to the Philippines, they were under the Habsburg dynasty.
The Sinulog committee then included the two-headed eagle to a native warrior's shield. The native shield is thought to symbolize the country's struggle to colonization while the Santo Niño's coat of arms printed on its face represented the country's recognition of Christianity.