I learned about the Sinulog-Santo Niño Festival. Sinulog comes from the Cebuano word for water-current movements, sulog. The festival involves ritual dancing to pray to the Santo Niño, and this dancing mimics water flowing. You take two steps forward and one step backward while swaying.
The traditional dance began long before Spaniards stepped foot in the Philippines, with Cebuanos using the dance to worship their own idols. After Magellan brought an image of the Santo Niño to the Philippines and the people accepted Christianity, they began worshiping the sacred image of Santo Niño in the same way.
Cebu is a city that used to be reliant on the the ocean, and on the fresh water from local waterfalls. I believe that it is the closeness of water to the community at Cebu that caused the indigenous peoples to begin the Sinulog celebration in the first place. Now, the festival is connected to the religion of the countryas a whole, as the majority of peoplein Philippines are Catholic. While Cebu is the central location of this festival, there are many communities throughout the Philippines that celebrate it in a smaller, but similar, fashion.
