Rain or shine, good times or bad, the celebration is unstoppable…the fiesta must go on!
Long before these islands became a Spanish colony, the native, indigenous people had an elaborate thanksgiving ritual system, traditions which are quite similar to a number of ancient pagan harvest celebrations.
For the Subanen, an indigenous people in the southern Philippines, they practice a thanksgiving ritual wherein the head of the host family, usually a village chief called timuay, plans it to express gratitude to the spirits.
The rituals ensure harmony among family, clan, and community members, as well as among the human, natural, and spiritual worlds. They include asking the spirits for permission to gather materials from the forest, presenting coin offerings, inviting the spirits of the departed to feast, invoking spirits of water and land, music and dance.
Afterwards, participants dance on an elevated wooden structure called the buklo, a sacred and social space which resonates with a sound believed to please the spirits.
This is followed by a community dance marking the renewal of spiritual and social relationships within the community.
Though the ritual system remains the community’s strongest unifying force, there are several social, political, and economic threats that compromise its viability, notably the influx of other cultures into the Subanen’s traditional homeland, changes in family dynamics, and economic constraints.
When the Spanish missionaries entered the Philippines in the mid-1500s, they found that the fiesta was a convenient tool to help teach Filipinos about the Roman Catholic faith.
That is why in the Philippines and many other former Spanish colonies, the Spanish word fiesta is used to denote a communal religious feast to honor a patron saint.
The Philippines has adapted this, and the celebration of fiestas has been incorporated/assimilated in our culture and tradition to mark religious, historical, or cultural events with music, dances, food, and fun. Many pagan celebrations were also transformed into religious festivals.
The Church also established a calendar of Saints’ Days to commemorate the lives and miracles of various holy figures. These Saints’ Days became the Patron Saints’ Days of each region, town, or village.
Every barrio, town, province, city has its own fiesta to celebrate once a year. So for sure, there’s always a fiesta going on somewhere around the country.
How have Filipino Protestants responded to it? Some of them insist the fiesta has become merely a social event. Relatives and townspeople meet and enjoy a holiday together.
Some evangelical Christians, however, don’t want to have anything to do with town fiestas. They istead make other plans for the day, and stay far away from such festivities.
Still other Protestants try to use the fiestas to keep Christian traditions alive, as there are, however, creative ways of giving a biblical significance to the day.
Some Christian families prepare food, invite guests to their homes, and use the occasion to visit together, and most importantly, to give thanks to God. One of the participating families I know even prepares leaflets with meditations and prayers of thanksgiving.
Happy Dumaguete fiesta everyone!
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