Once in a year, every 3rd week of January, the people of Kalibo celebrate the Ati-atihan festival. It’s a weeklong celebration of street and tribal dancing, float parade of every municipality and praising the Holy child – Sto. Nino.
It is said that a 13th
century (c.1200 A.D.) event explains the origins of the festival. A group of 10
Malay chieftains called Datus, fleeing from the island of Borneo settled in the
Philippines, and were granted settlement by the Ati people, the tribes of Panay
Island. The Ati-Atihan was originally a pagan festival from this tribe
practicing Animism, and their worshiping their anito god. Spanish missionaries
gradually added a Christian meaning. Today, the Ati-Atihan is celebrated as a
religious festival. (Excerpt from http://kalibo.gov.ph/)
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The celebration was full of fun, colors, sounds and
a lot of people. A reunion of old batch mates, old friends, new friends and folks
from all sorts of ages. It’s truly a season of enjoyment and reuniting. Everywhere
you go, you can see the people covered with blank paint or charcoal symbolizing
our ancestors “the aetas”.
Before the week of ati-atihan start, we can feel
that a lot of people are cramming for the festival. It started last January 10
and ended at January 19. A ten days celebration, which is special because last
ati atihan festival it only lasted for almost seven days. I learned that the
reason for this is to promote the tourism here in Kalibo. There’s a lot of
party and gatherings was celebrated for this event.
The festival is also a time for us student to have a
break from our busy time in school, a time for us to bond with our friends. To
forget for a moment all about those assignments, projects, reports, exam and a
lot more. When we are together it seems that the time is never ending; we are
all happy and enjoying.
The festival was also an arena for competition,
competition for awareness. At the parade of the municipalities they have these
signs about saving our mother earth. A way of telling us that we need to move
and take responsibility for our actions.
The festival is also the time to give thanks to all
of our gifts that we receive last year and repentance for all our sins that we
had made. It seems that the festival had become a diversion for us to overcome
the horrible event that happened to us last November it brought hope to the
faces of the people.
Truly we “Pinoys” had been programmed to “smile” despite the problems around us.
