Giant Lantern Festival

The Giant Lantern Festival of San Fernando is the event that the province of Pampanga is most known for. No doubt that is the reason why San Fernando, Pampanga has been dubbed as the Christmas Capital of the Philippines.

The most spectacular exihibition and parade of Parol is held every year in San Fernando Pampanga, famous for the most unique star lanterns in shapes, colors and sizes made from all kinds of material.

The town becomes the center of Christmas activities, every year spectators get to marvel the amazing lights of the giant lanterns. These lanterns were made by the skillful parol makers from Pampanga. It was in the year 1931 that electricity was introduced to the San Fernando lantern, thus sparking the birth of the first Giant Lantern Festival. The added illusion of dancing lights highlighted the bright colors and intricate designs of these Giant Lanterns.

At this time, the lights were controlled by individual switches that were turned on and off following the beat of the music. The barangays of Del Pilar, Sta. Lucia and San Jose were among the first barangays to participate in the festival.

Masskara Festival

Bacolod City is well known all for its Masskara Festival during the month of October. The Masskara Festival is hosted by Bacolod City during the first two weeks of October. A horde of visitors, both local and foreign, enjoys twenty days of beer drinking, dining, and street dancing at the Masskara Festival. Talk about serious Filipino partying.

The Masskara Festival was originally instituted to commemorate the hardships of the people of Negros Province. The original idea behind the Masskara Festival was to promote a time of happiness to a down trodden people.

Masskara Festival has gone a long way since its humble beginnings and is now able to generate revenues for big businesses due to tourism. It has taken its festive spirit through a path that leads to progress for the locals of Bacolod City.

The term Masskara is coined from two words — mass, meaning a crowd and the Spanish cara, the word for face. Masskara has a double meaning, first is “mask” and the second one is “many faces”. Cultural artist, painter, and cartoonist Ely Santiago coined the term in 1980.

The symbol of the Masskara Festival is a smiling mask, which was envisioned to show that the people Negros Province manifests a happy spirit in spite of all the crisis they have gone through.

Throughout the two weeks of the Masskara Festival, the people from other neighboring provinces flock to Bacolod City for the celebrations. Everyone joins in on the round the clock feasts. Colorful and lively parades abound in people wearing masks and costumes representing various organizations from the government and private groups.

Pasaway Festival

Pasaway Festival. Sipalay City has been the copper belt of southern Philippines for more than five decades. The first industrial mining of copper transformed Sipalay into a booming town and eventually into a city. Pasaway Festival is a copper worship celebrated every March 31. Participants depict the tribes in ethnic costumes with copper ornaments dancing to the beat of Pasaway music.

It features street dancing and merry making by performers from seventeen barangays of the city attired in mardigras and exotic costumes in the semblance of copper minerals.

Discover Cebu

Cebu City is a significant cultural centre in the Philippines. The city's most famous landmark is Magellan's Cross. This cross, now housed in a chapel, was supposedly planted by Ferdinand Magellan when he arrived in the Philippines in 1521. It was encased in hollow tindalo wood in 1835 upon the order of the Augustinian Bishop Santos Gómez Marañon to prevent devotees from taking it home chip by chip. The same bishop restored the present template or kiosk, located at the present Magallanes street between the City Hall and Colegio del Santo Niño. Revered by Filipinos, the Magellan's Cross is a symbol of Christianity in the Philippines.


A few steps away from the Magellan's Cross is the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño (Church of the Holy Child), an Augustinian church which was elevated to the rank of Basilica in 1965 during the 400th year celebrations of Christianity in the Philippines, held in Cebu. The church, which was the first to be established in the islands. It is built of hewn stone and features the country's oldest relic, the figure of the Santo Niño de Cebu (Holy Child of Cebu).




This religious event is celebrated on the islands cultural festivities known as the Sinulog festival, held every third Sunday of January which celebrates the festival of the Santo Niño, the patron saint of Cebu. The Sinulog is a dance ritual of pre-Hispanic indigenous origin. The dancer moves two steps forward and one step backward to the rhythmic sound of drums. This movement resembles somewhat the current (sulog) of the river. Thus, the Cebuanos called it Sinulog.