Philippine Festivals Festivals and fiestas offer a unique window to the Filipino's cultural landscape and an opportunity to savor the many celebratory flavors of its cultural diversity. Athough festivals and fiestas share a common definition, there are distinctions. Despite late year's loan and expenses still unpaid and the coffers still empty, it is unthinkable not to lay out the welcome-mat come fiesta day. A pig, cow, or carabao is sold, to ensure that all the friends and neighbors may come and share in the merriment and festivity that last until the last morsel is eaten or the last jigger of liquor is quaffed.
Fiestas are usually smaller in scale, celebratiing a patron saint, a hero or historical event.
A festival is a more recent evolvement, denoting bigness and urbanity, with more elements of organized commerce and a wider celebratory scope. Both offer opportunites to experience something singularly Filipino, events usually detailed with religiosity and folklore and abounding in that legendary Filipino hospitality. A celebration honoring the Sto. It is a non-stop hyperkinetic street celebration, from morning until dusk, gradually building to a maddening merging of dance, drumbeats and bacchanalia. The feast of the Black Nazarene is a religious festival celebrating the suffering and death of Christ.