Pit Señor - Annual Celebration "Sinulog Festival" in Cebu City

Stage presentation about Sinulog Festival

The Sinulog festival is one of the biggest and most colorful festivals in the Philippines with a very rich and vibrant history. The main festival is held every third Sunday of January in Cebu City in honor of the Santo Niño (Holy Child), or the child Jesus, who used to be the patron saint of  Cebu (since in the Catholic faith Jesus is not a saint, but God,so the patron saint is changed to Our Lady of Guadalupe). It is basically a dance ritual which reminds the Filipino people’s pagan past and their acceptance of the Catholic Christianity.

This festival shows 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 and every corners are usually 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. Another event is the Sinulog sa Kabataan, which will be done by the youths of Cebu one week before the Festival itself, the Grand Parade.

Sinulog Painting on the ground

There are also trade fairs where Sinulog features Cebu export quality products and people around the world flock on the treasures that are originally from Cebu.

These days, 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 different 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.

“Sinulog” simply means “graceful dance” together with the drumbeats and a solemn and holy mass become a crowd-drawing international cultural festival of Cebu. Cebu has a lot of Roman Catholic Archdioceses, 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.

Sinulog Painting on the ground and walls

And don't forget that one of the most remarkable religious landmarks of the province aside from the Basilica Minore del Santo Nino is the Magellan’s Cross. The cross today is encased with Tindalo Wood but inside is the real wooden tindalo cross which is 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.