Festivals and fiestas offer a unique window to the Filipino's cultural landscape and an opportunity to savor the many celebratory flavors of its cultural diversity. Athough festivals and fiestas share a common definition, there are distinctions.

Fiestas are usually annual rites of celebrations with small town and rural flavors: streamers and indigenous arches, the loud and discordant marching bands, the procession honoring the patron saint, the feasting and bacchanalia. Unlike most other holidays that are family-oriented, the fiesta is community-oriented; one for which all stops are pulled. Despite late year's loan and expenses still unpaid and the coffers still empty, it is unthinkable not to lay out the welcome-mat come fiesta day. A pig, cow, or carabao is sold, to ensure that all the friends and neighbors may come and share in the merriment and festivity that last until the last morsel is eaten or the last jigger of liquor is quaffed.

Fiestas are usually smaller in scale, celebratiing a patron saint, a hero or historical event. A festival is a more recent evolvement, denoting bigness and urbanity, with more elements of organized commerce and a wider celebratory scope. Both offer opportunites to experience something singularly Filipino, events usually detailed with religiosity and folklore and abounding in that legendary Filipino hospitality. 

Ati-Atihan
Kalibo, Aklan
3rd Weekend of January

A celebration honoring the Sto.Niño, a harvest thanksgiving, and a 13th-century friendship pact between the native aetas and the Malays. It can be considered the Mardi Gras of the Philippines: a weekend of uninhibited merriment, of endless parades and processions of grouped revelers, sooted and intricately costumed, marching an endless loop of streets, dancing to the continuous, rhythmic and hypnotic beating of drums, while countless Sto. Niño statues are carried by or hoisted over the parading crowds or pushed through small make-do floats. It is a non-stop hyperkinetic street celebration, from morning until dusk, gradually building to a maddening merging of dance, drumbeats and bacchanalia.

Black Nazarene
Quiapo, Manila
January 9

The feast of the Black Nazarene is a religious festival celebrating the suffering and death of Christ. After mass, a life-sized Black Nazarene carrying the cross on its shoulder is paraded around the Quiapo area by thousands of male devotees as throngs of people attempt to come close enough to touch the statue believing that such will bring about miraculous effects. (See: The Quiapo Market) 

Carabao Festival
San Isidro, Nueva Ecija; Pulilan, Bulacan; Angono, Rizal
May 15
The feast day of San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of all farmers, is celebrated with the carabao featured as the main attraction in the days activities. Each farmer dresses his carabao, then taken to the church courtyard for the priest's blessing, then paraded around town. A festival highlight is the carabao race in the afternoon.  After crossing the finish line, they kneel to await the priest's blessing.

Chinese New Year
Chinatowns
Late January or early February
The Chinese New Year is observed from dates within late January to early February. Chinatown in Manila is the main site of this celebration, profuse with famous Chinese lion dances, street performances, fireworks and typical feasting. Tikoy, a Chinese delicacy, is given out galore during this celebration.

Flores de Mayo
Month of May
Flores de Mayo is a month long flower festival celebration in honor of the Virgin Mary. May is considered the flower festival month in honor of the Virgin Mary. In the rural areas, flower offerings are made daily in churches and temporary altars (tuklongs) in barrios. It culminates at the end of the month with the Santacruzan festival. A day long celebration, the statues of the Virgin Mary are dressed and paraded through streets lined by a variety of food items (bread, candies, fruits, bundles of coins) hanging from bamboo poles. The traditional procession features the Reina Elena with a little boy representing King Constantine and others biblical characters.

International Bamboo Organ Festival
February  15 to 25
Las Piñas Church
The Las Piñas bamboo organ is the only one of its kind in the world. The celebration features 10 days of cultural performances by both local and international artists at the old Las Piñas church that houses the bamboo organ.

Kadayawan Festival
Davao City
3rd Week of August
This colorful festival is the Davaoeños thanksgiving celebration for a bountiful harvest of fruits, flowers, vegetables, rice and corn grains. Kadayawan derives from the Dabawnon word "Madayaw" which means "anything that is good" and from the Bagobo word "dayaw" meaning good. The 5-day festival starting on the third Wednesday of August originated from the Bagobo tribal practice of celebrating a bountiful harvest, rife with dances, music and rituals. The festival highlights with a parade of flowered-decked floats, street dancing, the waling-waling contests and exhibits.

Lantern Festival
San Fernando, Pampanga
December 24
Ubiquitous in December, it is the most common expression of the Christmas holidays celebrations. San Fernando, Pampanga features a parade of multicolored lanterns mounted on motorized floats or trucks, some as large as 50 feet diameter.

Misa de Gallo
Simbang Gabi
December 16
Misa de gallo is a nine-day series of pre-dawn masses starting on the 16th of December, marking the opening of the Christmas season in the Philippines. Churches are lit up in the early morning as the church grounds are filled with stalls selling christmas wares and delicacies. 

Moriones Festival
Boac, Mogpog & Gasal, Marinduque
Holy Week
The towns of Boac, Mogpog and Gasan in the island province of Marinduque become the stages for this 200 year old religious folk festival celebrated during the Lenten season. Morion (mask or visor) is that part of the medieval Roman armor that covers the face. Moriones refers to the masked and costumed penitents who march around the town as barbaric Romans. The festival climaxes with the reenactment of the beheading of Longinus, the centurion who pierced the side of Jesus. As legend tells it, blind in one eye, his sight was restored when Christ's blood splattered on his eye.

A unique Holy Week experience, the Moriones festival is much more than the colorful Roman mask and costumes. It is a window into the religiosity of a culture exhibiting itself through a variety of traditional lenten rituals and presentations: the senaculo, passion readings, the reenactment of the Christ's cross-carrying walk to Calvary, penitents and flaggelants, the late afternoon candlelit processions of religious floats and the town faithful.  (THE place to stay in Boac: Tahanan sa Isok [Inn Isok] 042 332-1231) 

Pahiyas sa Quezon Festival
Sariaya, Lucban, Tayabas, Quezon
15 May

A thanksgiving feast celebrating San Isidro Labrador, the patron saint of local farmers in Lucban and Saryaya, Quezon and in Mindanao. During the celebration, homes are decorated with kiping (multi-colored paper-thin leaf-shaped rice kropeck) and harvest vegetables. 

Peñafrancia Fluvial Festival
Naga City, Camarines Sur
3rd Saturday of September
The festival is celebrated in honor of the Virgin Mary. It starts with a nine-day novena, the last day falling on the 3rd Saturday of September and highlighted by a fluvial procession. The image of the Virgin Mary is transferred back by barge from the cathedral to the Peñafrancia Church. There is a river procession of throngs of people in boats as devotees lining up the river banks shout: "Viva la Virgen!"

Pilgrimage on a Caravan
La Union, Pangasinan
Lenten Month
A month-long celebration of Marian feasts of Our Lady of Manaog, Our Lady of Charity, Our Lady of the Fields and Lenten rituals from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday.

Sayaw sa Obando
Obando
May 17, 18, and 19
Celebrating the patron saint of the childless Santa Clara, the main feature of the festival, Sayaw sa Obando, is a dance by childless women, believing that in their participation, they will be blessed and their wish for motherhood fulfilled. In the same festival, two other saints are honored: San Pascual de Baylon, a shepherd who became a model of good virtues and the Lady of Salambao, deriving her name from an image of the Immaculate Conception found by the river by a fisherman using a salambao net.

Sinulog Festival

The festival celebrates with a solemn procession, the occasion of the transfer of the first Santo Niño in 1565 from a burned Zubu (Cebu) village to a shrine that later became the San Augustin church. The celebration also features the Dancing of the Sinulog, a prayer-dance performed at the church in front of the Sto. Niño. Pre-Spanish and pagan in origin, the dance is performed for many reasons: as a petition to Bathala to accept departed souls, for thanksgiving, for harvests, or any assortment of needs.
     Legend says that at the time the image of the Santo Niño was being presented by Magellan to Queen Juana, the natives natives started gesticulating and shuffling; thus, the origins of the Sinulog dance. It has evolved into a street pageant of dance, performed by hundreds of costumed performers and spectators who join the parade route through the streets with its colorfully decorated store facades.

Sumbali Festival
Bayombong, Nueva Viscaya
August
A week-long festival celebrating Sto. Domingo de Guzman, the patron saint of Bayombong. Sumbali is a war dance of the Negritoes during which the dancers are sooted black, wearing G-strings and wigs in an imitation of the Aetas.

Turumba Festival
Pakil, Laguna
April 1
The Turumba festival derives from pre-Christian healing practices of Pakil priestesses, rife with folk religiosity and pagan ritual elements of animal sacrifices and trances. The priestesses healing abilities caught the ire and counterefforts of the Catholic friars and their eventual demise. What remains are traces of its original celebration: a hobbling dance and chanting Turumba.