Written by by Louie Jon A. Sanchez | The AJPress
The Santo Niños of JanuaryTwo images of Christ continue to govern the faith of the Filipino. The first one is, of course, the suffering Christ, the Christ of the Pasyon, the Christ of Quiapo. Balagtas had once allegorized our country in his Albanya and called it “bayan kong sawi,” which the expatriate poet Eric Gamalinda translated into the title of his novel, My Sad Republic (2000). The Philippines as the sad republic could not help but be one; after the colonial masters replaced the epics with the Christian myth of the Passion, Death and Resurrection, Filipinos have sung this very suffering and made it their own, in the hope of redemption
Reynaldo Ileto’s Pasyon and Revolution (1997), one of Asia’s most acclaimed scholarly works of the past years, placed Pasyon at the heart of Filipino popular movements and even the cause for independence. The very suffering of Christ moved the Filipino and turned him to face the colonizer, but also the uncertain fate of her country. The imagery of Christ’s suffering, as exemplified not only in the Nazareno icon, but also in the images of the Ecce Homo (“Behold, The Man”), the Santo Entierro (The Dead Christ) and the Crucifixion, have made Filipino culture more meaningful and full of depth. For not only did Filipinos resonate with the vulnerability of Christ at his last moments on Earth; they have re-read the whole myth and made it their lifework, a talisman in this valley of tears.
Jesus once said to his disciples in the Gospels that, “unless you turn and become like children, you will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.” Without knowing it, his own words seemed to have transformed him into that form of powerlessness and fragility, at least in the discourse of iconography. In another manifestation of practicing what he preaches, he become the word made flesh, the Santo Niño, the Christ Child, and traveled far and wide to reach Filipinas, where he will bless homes with his childlike holiness. As a most adorned image of Christ in the country, he was re-imagined to walk with common folk, to live with them. His many names and patronages, as well as various costumes (he could be doctor in one instance, and a policeman in another), recall not only the vestiges of the era of the circumnavigation and colonization, but also its ease of appropriation and acculturation. Who wouldn’t love a little boy who has in his hands that shining orb, which according to Nick Joaquin, already presaged what the circumnavigators would eventually find out in their journeys? He’s definitely got the whole world in his hands.
To say the least, that’s the whole world of Filipino culture he holds in his hands through the centuries. If we compare him to the others in the pantheon of saints, he’s the only one who had come down from his pedestal. And not only that: he took off his royal robes and worn the same everyday clothes of his people. Part of his mythic mischief is this down-to-earth portrayal, as shown by a usual January parade of his many images in Manila. The occasion looks like a children’s costume party. But not just costumes, but more appropriately, personas. He could be anybody, and he could play around. The Santo Niño is after all, considered The Fool in the pantheon. The Augustinian Fathers in Manila had once cut off his legs when he kept returning to the high altars in Cebu, where he was revered since the time of Rajah Humabon. And his myths of mischief, also gathered by the folklorist Damiana Eugenio, are nothing but amusing. The Child Jesus’ though is of a sweeter kind, albeit emphasizing his gentle elusiveness.
In gathering folklore, Eugenio found in Rosa C.P. Tenazas’ The Santo Niño of Cebu (1965), at least four tales relating to the origin and the mischief of the Holy Child. The first one concerns a fisherman who fished out from the sea, a piece of firewood which he had found quite mysterious, mystical; no matter how he puts it back in water, it always finds itself tangled in his net. So he took it home and tried to see what it does. He first tried its “magic” with the drying of his palay. In another instance, he dreamt of the firewood turning into “a statue of a beautiful child.” When he woke up, he witnessed a “transformation happening before his eyes.” “The fire-brand had indeed taken on the form of a little child! As the days went by, the features became clearer and clearer until at last, it became the image of the Santo Niño as we see it today,” retells Eugenio.
The Santo Niño prankster meanwhile figured in the three other tales. In the first, a child was said to have gone to the market to buy danggit. He told the vendor to charge it to the prior of the church. Later on, everyone discovered that the boy was actually the Christ Child in the altar, as several pieces of danggit were found at the foot of his statue. The second one was about his wanderings. The Santo Niño was known to love visiting the nearby seashore. One day, one of the sacristans, drunk and all, discovered that the Child had once again dirtied his robe. As he was cleaning it, he supposedly said, “Pastilan gasuroy-suroy ka na sad, no? Maayo ra ba ug mosuroy ka imo akong dad-an ug quarta’ng ipalit ng tuba! (My goodness, so you have gone wandering again? It would be well if every time you went around you’d bring me money for tuba!)” Well, he got his wish, again, at the foot of the statue. The third one happened allegedly in 1942, during the war. Military officers related that “a short, dark, curly-haired boy” attempted to enlist in the United States Armed Forces in the Far East (USAFFE), “to defend Cebu.” In here, he was being patriotic.
To celebrate the Feast of the Santo Niño in January is nothing but an apt reminder to the Christian majority in the Philippines about the little babe born in the stable a few weeks back. The centerpiece Child Jesus of course is the one in Cebu, the very first one which reached the land according to Antonio Pigafetta, the chronicler of Magellan. And it had long been the little prince of the Queen City of the South, since the newly-baptized queen of Humabon, Juana, found such fondness for the child who stood proud in his small pedestal. The Santo Niño took the place of the idols, which the natives have burned in that myth painted by Fernando Amorsolo. The early Cebuanos learned to adore the little child rather easily and when Legaspi arrived, they had found in the settlement, that little child gifted according to chronicles, by Pigafetta himself, enthroned in a makeshift altar. The colonizers built and church and continued to propagate the cult of the little child. The simple cult grew into a region-wide festivity, known today as the “Sinulog”, one of the country’s most popular fiestas.
The word “sinulog” comes from the Cebuano adverb, “sulog”, which means “like the movement or water current.” Another Cebuano word explains this further: “magpasulog”, which I encountered during my first visit to Cebu. It came to me as “to have our prayers danced,” the way the ladies outside the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño would move while offering the prayer candles they were holding. The whole Sinulog Festival is a fiesta of dances and street parades, where the first Christianization is reenacted year after year, after the grand procession.
Photos by Ted MadambaThe Santo Niño from the Queen City would find itself in many altars of the Visayas. In Tacloban, he is venerated in a shrine originally built as a rest house of the family of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos. The Holy Child has also become a patron saint of Leyte province, and had been venerable to his devotees ever since. But in the other side of the Visayas region, in Panay, a festival which probably has more historical value than religious became, another celebration in honor of the Sto. Nino, known to many as the Ati-atihan Festival. This celebration commemorates the coming of the ten Malay datus, who were granted refuge by the native atis. With the coming of the Spaniards, the January festival’s animist beginings was given a Christian dimension.
“Ati-atihan” became byword in Philippine culture, which now generally pertains to the black skin color of the natives, and in recent times, the very color painted on skin by “ati-atihan” dancers. The atis of Panay would parade on the streets carrying and
Santo Niño images, the way people do in Cebu, and in the other colorful Santo Niño parades in the country. But they may also put on the Santo Niño’s mischief, smearing faces of unmindful spectators with their black paint. Like the Santo Niño, the word “ati-atihan”, and the whole concept behind the benevolent native black man, have already been embraced by the Filipino culture for a long time. Most fiestas today feature ati-atihan dances, even without the Santo Niño. This shows how the celebrators transcended the cult of the honored in a dynamic interrogation and dialogue between the indigenous and the colonial.But the ever loyal city of Manila of course also has its very own Santo Niño. In Tondo, one of the old settlements surrounding the Walled City of Intramuros, a shrine dedicated to the Santo Niño de Tondo has been a regular pilgrimage church for Santo Niño devotees in the Metropolis. Celebrating its fiesta on the third Sunday of January, the parish started as a convent and was one of the first structures built by the Spaniards in Luzon, under the auspices of the Augustinian Friars, who also managed the Santo Niño shrine in Cebu. Suffering a lot of upheavals from the Sangleys and the lack of funds to support the facility, the structure was only completed in 1695 and was enlarged 1728. Like many churches in Manila, the parish structure suffered numerous earthquakes and had to be rebuilt time and again. According to historical accounts, the church was one of the first structures to use iron sheets.
The festivities in Tondo are also reminiscent of that of Cebu’s and Panay’s. In his book Almanac for Manileños (1979), Joaquin recounted what could have been his own witnessing of the feast. “At four in the afternoon on the visperas (meaning the Saturday before) the Sto. Niño of Tondo is borne to the sea by a
crowd among which groups of women in pastora hats, or in katipunera attire: white camisa, red saya. The is through sunny streets hung with bunting and here and there will be a giant heart of bell that opens up as the Sto. Niño passes to unloose a shower of petals. Everyone dances, even the barefoot men bearing the image and the boys bearing standard or farol,” he wrote, as quoted by manila-map.com. In another book, Culture and History (2004), he wrote: “Water seems to be the chief element connected with the cult (the Santo Niño of Pandacan presided over a well) and the association may be a relic of the days when our first Santo Niño ruled the waters of the South: for in the 44-year interval between Magellan and Legazpi, the Santo Niño of Cebu became a pagan rain god.”The Santo Niño will always be part of Filipino daily life, and not just history. Aside from its many forms and names (we have the more popular red or green robed Santo Niño de Suerte, with the bag of coins in his little arms, and usually enshrined in homes), and its various patronages (some towns and cities still cradle and kiss a Niño Bambino every Christmas), it has steadily found itself in popular culture as an important icon. Television, for instance, has had a lot of exemplars, from the time of Vilma Santos’ Trudis Liit, until the present primetime’s of May Bukas Pa. The transformation of the Santo Niño as a cultural construct may be found in the portrayal of children’s characters. The personas are endowed with all the virtues of the Santo Niño—obedience, faith, kind—heartedness. The Holy Child has indeed wandered and lived amongst us, giving the most important morals in life.
The children whose characters suffer in soaps or movies may also resonate with a peculiar but unpopular Santo Niño imagery: the Santo Niño de Pasion, where the almost naked babe attempts to lie down and put his head on a skull, his passion foretold. Like the grown up Christ in his glorious Resurrection, what is being shown is that there is life and redemption in the midst of human travails. The image is an apt reminder of the Christ’s childlike acceptance and openness. So next time we watch Santino, let us remember why we are so fond of him, and the other kids with golden hearts who took national TV by storm. Like the Santo Niño, they had the whole world in their hands. Our world.
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