Festivals

This seven-day festival is held to honor the Baby Jesus in Kalibo, Alkan. Catholics attend mass and religious processions take place in the streets accompanied by traditional music and dancing. The final day, the third Sunday in January, sees a torchlit parade and a masquerade ball where the most colorful tribe wins prizes.

This day-long festival is celebrated by the people of Cebu to honor their patron saint, the infant Jesus, and to commemorate the city’s history of paganism and acceptance of Roman Catholicism. There is a colorful carnival parade with music and drumming and crowds line the streets to watch the traditional Cebuano dance performance.

Visitors flock to Iloilo City for this celebratory day held in honor of the child Jesus and of the arrival of Malay settlers on Panay. There are parades of flotillas on the water and a carnival in the street where the locals dress in colorful costumes and perform energetic street dances to music and drumming.

The Black Nazarene is a life-sized statue of Christ carrying the cross. On January 9, Catholics flock to Manila to see it carried by barefoot men around the city to depict the stations of the cross. The people line the street to watch the procession and hope for the chance to touch the statue, believed to be miraculous.