Where it still survives: Angeles

When it occurs: Saturday night before Christmas Eve

What it is: It is a competition of giant lanterns, measuring two- to three-stories high, trucked in from the competing barangays of San Fernando. During the performance, the lanterns take turns in impressing spectators with a display of dancing lights made possible through rotors placed behind the lantern—large steel barrels rotated by a driver to synchronize with the music.

Each rotor contains a map made of thousands of hairpins (yes, aspile), each hairpin corresponding to a light bulb in the lantern to which it is connected by an electric wire. Strips of masking tape cover portions of the rotor so that when the rotor is rotated, the flow of electricity to the lantern is cut or released according to this map, thus producing the illusion of dancing lights.

This rotor technology is both primitive and ingenuous. The beauty and elegance of a giant lantern hide the complex network that powers it: 4,000 light bulbs individually holed up in a vast mesh of wires, cardboard and foil, covered with layers upon layers of multicolored paper and plastic, and connected to the rotors by hundreds of yards of electric wire tangled like spaghetti at the back of the lantern.

During the competition, the lanterns “dance” to cheesy music like soundtracks from Voltes V and Hawaii Five-O or irreverent pop tunes like Ocho-Ocho, Spaghetting Pababa and Ang Bangu-bango ng Bulaklak, and judges grade the lanterns based on synchronicity and audience impact, rarely on the lantern’s design since many of them are done by the same makers and therefore the differences in design are not that radical. When the giant lantern festival was still held in the patio of the San Fernando Cathedral, the lanterns danced to a live brass band playing traditional Kapampangan songs like Atin Cu Pung Singsing and O Caca, O Caca.

How it began: As mentioned earlier, the tradition of illuminated lanterns in Pampanga most likely began in Bacolor as part of the La Naval festivities. Residents used paper lanterns to protect candle flames from wind and rain during the La Naval months of October and November. When the capital was transferred to San Fernando in 1904, the tradition of illuminated paper lanterns followed as well, although the competition itself may have begun only in 1908, in the new capital.

The shift to electricity-powered lanterns occurred in 1931; with the problem of lighting thus solved, the lantern makers focused on expanding the size and enhancing the design and technology of the lanterns, including the innovative rotor system which replaced the manual switching system.

What it means: The ligligan parul of San Fernando is a showcase of Kapampangan vision, ingenuity and craftsmanship, and of the Kapampangans’ willingness to overspend just to produce a thing of beauty. Residents of the city may have become jaded to the giant lanterns but tourists are always dumbfounded by their magnificence and native technology. They look like spaceships with blinking rainbow lights descending upon the crowd, but more than being visual wonders, the San Fernando lanterns are genuine community heirlooms, giant heirlooms like the pyramids of Egypt which contain an ancient technology passed down from the ancestors.

Part of the charm is their fleeting nature: you know that they are put together only in December and after that they are disassembled again. Their heft and size make them unstoreable even in warehouses. You often see cannibalized giant lanterns lying in backyards during the rainy season, like skeletons long decomposed but awaiting their next reincarnation. It’s both sad and hopeful.

What the future holds: Years ago, the ligligan parul was held in the cathedral grounds in downtown San Fernando; later it was transferred to the Paskuhan Village parking lot and recently to the SM parking lot. The commercialization was inevitable to keep the amount of prizes commensurate to the rising cost of building a giant lantern, which can cost up to P300,000.00. Only a few barangays can afford to join the competition; in fact, the makers of giant lanterns are concentrated in only three barangays, namely, Del Pilar, Sta. Lucia and San Jose.

The best known lantern maker today is Roland Quiambao; he is often commissioned to make the lanterns of several barangays; thus, he is the one competing with himself. The lanterns should express the character of the barangay that owns it and should be a product of the residents’ creativity, instead of just their ability to pay.

There should be an effort to reintroduce traditional elements and return to the original intents of the festival; for example, organizers argue that old Kapampangan tunes are not fast enough and therefore not challenging enough for the dancing capacities of the lanterns. But this is because the festival has degenerated into a contest of the lanterns’ technological prowess, instead of their aesthetics; after all, it is a giant lantern festival, not a dancing lantern festival.

Also, these magnificent monuments of light and color do not deserve to be unveiled in the parking lot of a shopping center; they have to be returned to the parish church which inspired their creation in the first place; if the patio cannot accommodate the number of viewers, maybe a series of shows can be done, not only in the cathedral grounds but also in the barangays which they represent, and not only during Christmas but long after it, if only to make the costly lanterns worth all the money the barangays have raised to make them. In recent years, the city government has made an effort to use the lanterns as vehicles of local tourism by exhibiting them in distant places like Rizal Park, Intramuros, and even Taiwan.

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