Saturday, January 08, 2005

Pit Senyor!

Sinulog 2005 Jan. 16 Sunday. Every year we celebrate it bonggang bongga under our current Mayor Tomas Osmeña. It all started way back in 1984 under Mayor Solon. The festivities lasted till night fall and you can see the colorful and beautiful floats of Kodak and the colored hard hats of Atlas Mining Corp. That was then, this is now. Sinulog is meant to celebrate the feast of the Sto. Niño. Sto Niño was given by Magellan as gift to Rajah Humabon of Cebu. The symbol of Sinulog is Sto. Niño and Sinulog means sinug, the act of lighting a candle and dancing in front of the church while praying.
But boy! Look at it now. That’s why I don’t usually go out and watch the festivities because its meaning has been misunderstood all these years. If you look at the commercialized t-shirts, advertisements, and all the hullabaloos, you can see that Sto. Niño is not there anymore! We are not Ati-atihan? Most of the shirts and newspaper advertisements carry pictures of black Indians or Ati-atihan persons with spears, Indian shields. My Gulay! That’s not Sinulog. I’ve been disappointed all these years and thank God I have this blog to pour out my *****. All these advertisements should carry the symbol of the Sto. Niño! Then there’s painting on the faces, and people drank beer all throughout the day. And you can see drunks in the early afternoon. So what’s there to go out? You can see it on TV. It’s not like in the early years where you can see the symbol of the Sto. Niño everywhere. Now, most of the advertisements show pictures of Ati-atihan. Eh di mag-ati-atihan nalang tayo. Are we celebrating Sinulog or Ati-atihan? And it’s just too commercialized. The essence is not there anymore.
Well, thanks to some who still know the meaning of Sinulog. Just remember: Sinulog is the feast of the Sto. Niño and nothing else. Thanks to the baby child Jesus for protecting Cebu all these years. And to everyone…Pit Senyor!

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