Postscript to a Festival

CEBU, Philippines — Okay, it’s over now – the momentous event that stirred the city for a whole week or so. Interestingly, by now the leadership of the annual Sinulog Festival must already be thinking up how they want next year’s festival to be. But, considering the scope of the festivities, why do go through all the trouble of staging the Sinulog year after year?

For one, the Sinulog Festival draws hordes of visitors that fill up the city to overflowing. It’s a tourism attraction that brings good business. It also exposes the beauty and the tourism amenities of Cebu to entice more visitors to come, frequently.

Still, in the first place, how did festival – any festival – come to be? 

Going through the same routine day-to-day life can be quite boring. This is perhaps why people decide to hold events for gathering together. In these events, they frolic together, indulging in food and drinks and gaiety.

And these gatherings are held for various reasons. Often, a religious significance is invoked. Sometimes it’s just tradition. And entire communities celebrate the set occasions.

In the observance of a general public festival, where everybody is expected to participate, people are exempt from doing work and other such regular commitments as school. The day – or, sometimes, days –of the event is often marked as a local or national holiday.

Next to religion and folklore, festivals also haveagricultural roots. Food is observably such a keyhighlight in many festivals. In many cultures, harvest time often has religious color – it calls for a celebration as thanksgiving for the good yield of the crop fields.

Festivals provide a sense of belonging for religious, social, or geographical groups, contributing to group cohesiveness. The occasions also provide entertainment, which is particularly important to local communities even in the lightof mass-produced entertainment of the present. Festivals are also an opportune time for displaying cultural or ethnic features, thus reassertingshared traditions and heritage among community members.

In modern times, festivals draw strangers such as tourists who are attracted to the culture of the celebrating community. Visitors come for the fun, especially where colorful pageantry is part of the celebration. Festivals are also homecoming time for family members who have since settle in other places; elders at home sharing stories and experience ensure the unity of the family.

During festivals people forget all their worries and focus on the celebration. They numb their senses in feasting, the consumption of specially prepared food. In the home, it is time for the elders to pass heirloom family recipes to the next generation. Great food is indeed another festival attraction.

Overall, festivals represent the people’s collective effort to have continuity in their life saga. Most festivals depict the community’s past against the picture of its present – and how the two eras blend together so well.

The Sinulog, for example, originated as a pagan ritual dance that became Christianized, turned into a cultural event of revelry in the present. Yet even as it has since taken on a secular nature – in the form of a grand parade, the prayer dance of the past still bears its mark in the choreography of the street Sinulog of today.