The story
Sinulog Festival in Cebu City
Sinulog is Cebu City's major annual festival honoring the Santo Nino, the image of the child Jesus brought by Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1521, marked by a street parade of dancers moving in the festival's distinctive two-steps-forward, one-step-back rhythm, performed to steady drumbeats each January and drawing costumed contingents from schools, companies and communities across the Visayas region.
The Santo Nino image at the center of Sinulog was given to the Cebuano ruler Rajah Humabon and his wife by Ferdinand Magellan's expedition in 1521 to mark their baptism into Christianity, and the image survived the years after Magellan's death and Spain's later, more permanent colonization of Cebu, making it the oldest religious relic in the Philippines and a central object of devotion in Cebuano Catholic life.