With the permission from www.bayanihannews.com

The traditional Filipino rituals before the arrival of the Europeans in the Philippines found their similarities in the religious feasts that were introduced by the Spanish religious.

The acculturation that had taken place during the three centuries of Spanish colonization resulted to a tradition known today as fiesta, a Filipino homecoming and towns visiting day.
 
Fiesta is usually held to celebrate a religious event or to honour a patron saint. As a way of life, it is a social occasion where relatives and friends from in and out of town get together to make merry. As the dates of fiestas rarely coincide, it is the best way to display good neighbourliness.
 
Every town has its patron saint and in whose honours a colourful fiesta is held annually. It is always characte-rised with gay music, feasting, display of fireworks, religious activities and theatrical performances.
 
In 1870, a Frenchman who lived in the Philippines for many years, described the religious festivals in the Philippines as excessively numerous. He observed that one half of the year is spent by Filipinos in fiestas where people from neighbouring villages attend in masse and stay for several days.
 
Pahiyas: A Harvest Festival
 
One kind of feast that draws people from all over the country, including overseas visitors, is the unique and colourful harvest festival called pahiyas (precious offering) held in May in the town of Lucban, Quezon Province, south of Manila. It is the townfolks way of saying thank you to Nature.
 


Nature’s bounty calls for celebration. An abundant harvest is a good reason to hold a festival which is linked with the religious calendar. The fiesta is preceded by the traditional novena, then followed by religious procession, banquet, balls, pabitin, and theatrical presentation.
 
While other towns in the Philippines pride themselves with their pinipig ritual or pounding of rice into crisp, chewable grain, a festive occasion characterized by rhythmic clapping, singing, dancing and general merriment and the carabao festival where decorated animals are paraded around town as a thanksgiving gesture, the poeple of Lucban are proud of their pahiyas and the kiping, a baked rice dough, paper thin and brilliantly coloured that helps transform the town into a festive picture.
 
The unusual whole day celebration that comprises the pahiyas is undertaken to honour San Isidro de Labrador, the Spanish farmer who was canonized a saint of the Catholic Church and regarded as the religious partron of farmers.
 
The entire agricultural town of Lucban comes to life during the harvest festival. Farm produce decorate the windows and doorways of houses along the streets, particularly the main thoroughfare. Side by side with the kiping, of varying colours of fuchsia, turmeric yellow and green, the colour of rice samplings, are bushels of corn, suman, mangoes, crabs, and other food items, all arranged in tassels and bunches and add to the colourful display for thanksgiving.
 


 
Houses are decocrated according to the owners’ occupation, hence, a farmer’s house is decorated with beautifully lined bananas, longanisas for sausage makers, garlands of cookies for bakers, coconut and bottles of lambanog, a native liquor fermented from coconut sap, for coconut growers and others.
 
In the afternoon, a candlelight parade with the image of the patron saint, San Isidro de Labrador, in the lead while the townsfolks follow, is held. The usually long procession winds its way around the town and back to the church. Giant figures walking in bamboo stilts, bulls made of paper mache joined the procession and excite the children who screams because of excitement. There is a feeling of frolicsome revelry all around.
 
Colourful bamboo poles, locally called pabitin, are lined along the sides of the streets where the procession will pass. The pabitins are festooned with fanciful decorations, candies and other edible goodies. As the procession moves, the bamboo poles are lowered to allow the participants and spectators the chance to grab what they wish from the pabitin. Along the street, elders throw candies to participants and this creates stampede which is a part of the festivities empahsising the idea of the townfolks enjoying the bounty from the land.
 
Although the procession of the image of San Isidro is the focal point of the pahiyas festival, a celebration continue even after the procession has completed its journey, and back, to the church. The banquet tables in almost all houses are overladen with food in stupendous amounts for guests to eat and even to take home. The lambanog is a popular drink that contributes to the merriment. Some says that doctors in the remote villages use it as a disinfectant.
 
Bicol fluvial festival
 
Another colourful tradition in the Philippines inherited from Spain is the annual fluvial festival of Bikol. In Naga City, in the southern part of Luzon, a well known and the biggest religious festival in the whole Bikol peninsula, is held in September in honour of the Virgin of Peñafrancia.
 


 
As in other religious rites in the Philippines, the main component of the fiesta of Peñafrancia is a nine-day prayer. The novenas is usually timed to make the ninth day falls on the third Saturday of September when the actual feast starts with the transfer of the image from its shrine in the Peñafrancia Church to the Naga Cathedral. The image is then paraded through the streets culminating in a fluvial procession. Even storm and the natural calamity can not stop devotees from participating in the fluvial parade when the image is escorted from the Naga Cathedral to a huge pagoda-barge waiting at the southern part of the Bikol River in the city.
 


The gaily decorated barge is then towed by twenty five to forty dug-out wooden canoes. Each canoe is rowed by thirty male devotees and prominent rowsmen. Like in the Quiapo, Manila, religious procession, no women are allowed to participate in this task, nor allowed to board the barge for fear that if a woman is on board, the barge will sink. This belief has been re-enforced when several accidents happened during fluvial processions in the past. Hundred of devotees were drowned when a barge sank and went with it the image and the people on board.


In another disaster, the bridge where the procession would pass under collapsed and also many died. All these accidents were blamed on the women who were found on board the barge carrying the Virgin and the child. Women’s place in the religious rites was confined along the riverbanks where they recite the prayers and in festive hymns while fireworks light the skies.
 
 

The procession returns to the Church of Peñafrancia where the religious rites end and follow by feasting, drinking and dancing that start early in the evening and last the following morning. Again, this is a feature of the pre-Spanish ritual of the natives. After the morning mass, a community singing and dance in front of the church is performed to show the devotees’ gratitude for the blessings before the rice planting starts.

 

 

Munting Nayon News Magazine