One thing that really captured my attention during Bukidnon’s Kaamulan Festival were the native handicrafts that the tribespeople were wearing: Beads, bags and even brass belts and bells.

Bukidnon’s Kaamulan Festival is way beyond colors, steps and costumes. Its all about encountering and learning about these indigenous people that have contributed to what Bukidnon is today.

It’s just a small festival, colors are more subdued and less contingents than Sinulog but the Ibajaynons surely takes centerstage and knows how to have fun!

It was rather weird. People were holding skewered and grilled chicken or parts of it. Some with steamed crabs, fish, and, even strange, raw meat stuck to a man’s body or raised up on wooden sticks, waved and being agitated to the loud shouts of Viva! Senor Sto. Nino!

January is festival month in the islands of Cebu and Panay and, unfortunately, for the third Sunday of the month, one has to choose: Sinulog in Cebu or Ati-atihan in Kalibo.

The late afternoon light was just so beautiful and the participating contingents during the opening of Albay’s monthlong fest, the Magayon Festival, were all assembled, waiting for their turn to perform, just added to the color. And of course, there were lovely ladies in the crowd

The image of the Black Nazarene, or Nuestro Padre Jesus Nazareno, to many of its fervent devotees will be on its yearly translacion, Saturday, 9 January. This is a commemoration of the 1787 transfer from the Recollect Church in Intramuros to it its current shrine in Quiapo, the Minor Basilica of the Black Nazarene.

The Sinulog Mardi Gras in Cebu is considered one of the biggest and grandest of festivals in the month of January. It is one of three that is marked with street dancing coinciding with the feast of the Holy Child that occurs in the Visayas.

If you’re looking for religious significance, you can’t find it here. But enjoy the colors and the festive atmosphere.

Every October, the Sto. Domingo Church in Quezon City is filled with pilgrims and devotees for the feast of the Nuestra Senora del Rosario, La Naval de Manila. For more than three centuries this event has been celebrated by the faithful as, like most Filipino Catholics, thanksgiving, a plea for divine intervention or affirmation of faith.

“Everyone in the household, relatives and friends come out to do and assist in the preparations for the big day.” I do admire the community spirit of the Lucbanins and this is best displayed in the run up to the Pahiyas festival. Everyone in the household as well as relatives and friends come out and do the preparations as well as assist others. During this time, what remains is just the mounting of the decor and doing finishing touches.

“The Pahiyas decorations are really stunning and the variety seems to be infinite!” What a riot of colors, an assemblage of all sorts of produce and exuberant display of creativity! The Pahiyas decorations are really stunning and the variety seems to be infinite that as one passes through the different houses and stalls, one is just struck with awe, amused and entertained.

“The kiping, thin, delicate and edible rice crackers is the festival’s identifying decor.”15th of May and the best place to be is nowhere else but in Lucban, a town in northwest Quezon bordering Laguna where the annual harvest festival, Pahiyas, is in full swing. Multicolored kiping, thin, delicate and edible rice crackers, in the shape of a leaf decorates windows, doors and just anything else on the house’s exterior is its most identifying decor.

Joining the Black Nazarene procession in Manila on 9 January is madness!

Aklanons surely know how to party! And they do it nightly around the streets bounding this Visayan capital’s plaza fronting the church in the run up to the festivities of the Ati-atihan that is celebrated every third Sunday of January. And yes, I was witness to this enjoyable and exuberant revelry as I made a mad dash from Cebu to Makati via Mindoro while finding time to spend a night in Kalibo, Aklan*.