About The Sinulog Festival

The Sinulog festival is one of the grandest and most colorful festivals in the Philippines with a
very rich history. 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 festival features some the country’s most colorful displays of pomp and pageantry:
participants garbed in bright-colored costumes dance to the rhythm of drums, trumpets, and
native gongs. The streets are usually lined with vendors and pedestrians all wanting to witness
the street-dancing. Smaller versions of the festival are also held in various 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.
Aside from the colorful and festive dancing, there is also the SME trade fair where Sinulog
features Cebu export quality products and people around the world flock on the treasures that are
Cebu.
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 featuring contingents
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.

Cradle of Christianity and History

Before the arrival of Spaniards the province of Cebu was known as Zubu was an island inhabited
by pagans, and Islamic people who traded with other Asian civilization.
Though the patron saint of Cebu is the Our Lady of Guadalupe, most of the natives honour Santo
Nino de Cebu, the Holy Child Jesus as their patron saint. Historical accounts reveal that the
wooden Santo Nino was a bequest by the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan after his
arrival in the Philippine soil on 16 March 1521under the flagship of Spain to the wife of Rajah
Humabon, Cebu’s chieftain. The image of Santo Niño became the emblem of friendship, taking,
and conversion to Christianity of the natives. For three hundred years, the Philippines was
colonised by the Spaniards—and Roman Catholic was a major religion.
The wooden Santo Niño regarded by the Cebuanos as representation of their affection was kept
and housed in the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño and San Nicholas de Tolentino church. A
colourful and overgenerous yearly festivity was conceptualised by the Cebuanos called
“Sinulog” become a climactic symbol of their undying devotion to the Santo Nino every third
Sunday of January.
“Sinulog” plainly means “graceful dance” accompanied by drumbeats and a glum holy mass
become a crowd-drawing international cultural festival of Cebu. Cebu has a Roman Catholic
Archdiocese, and has numerous historical churches, including the Basilica Minore del Santo
Niño, the Cebu Metropolitan Cathedral, the San Carlos Church, the Santo Rosario Parish
Church, San José-Recoletos Church, and Sacred Heart Church as well as several other non-
Catholic churches, mosques, and temples.
And one of the most remarkable religious landmark of the province aside from the Basilica
Minore del Santo Nino is the Magellan’s Cross. It is a wooden tindalo cross said to be the same
structure that Ferdinand Magellan planted in the seashore upon his arrival in the Philippines soil
in 1521. The antique cross housed in an artistically made shrine became a witness to the rise and
blazing progress of Cebu as the civilizing heart of the Philippines.

Manang Biday, ilukatmo man

'Ta bintana ikalumbabam
Ta kitaem 'toy kinayawan
Ay, matayakon no dinak kaasian
Siasinnoka nga aglabaslabas
Ditoy hardinko pagay-ayamak
Ammom ngarud a balasangak
Sabong ni lirio, di pay nagukrad

Denggem, ading, ta bilinenka

Ta inkanto 'diay sadi daya
Agalakanto't bunga't mangga
Ken lansones pay, adu a kita

No nababa, dimo gaw-aten

No nangato, dika sukdalen
No naregreg, dika piduten
Ngem labaslabasamto met laeng

Daytoy paniok no maregregko

Ti makapidut isublinanto
Ta nagmarka iti naganko
Nabordaan pay ti sinanpuso

Alaem dayta kutsilio

Ta abriem 'toy barukongko
Tapno maipapasmo ti guram
Kaniak ken sentimiento