Giant Lantern Festival

Brief History:

The Giant Lantern Festival is an annual festival held in December (Saturday before Christmas Eve) in the City of San Fernando in the Philippines. The festival features a competition of giant lanterns. Because of the popularity of the festival, the city has been nicknamed the "Christmas Capital of the Philippines".

The first lantern festival was held to honor President Manuel L. Quezon. At that time, Quezon made Arayat his rest area and converted Mount Arayat into a tourist resort. As a show of gratitude to Quezon, the people of San Fernando held a Christmas lantern contest to honor the first family. Quezon himself donated the prize for his lantern contest, which was personally awarded to the winner by First Lady Aurora Aragon Quezon -WikiPedia.org

December 15, 2012, right after our Mt. Manalmon adventure, in Bulacan, we had a side trip to Pampanga, just for the annual "Giant Lantern Festival" and of course because of Beth's invitation.  But, unfortunately she's not there due to some problems.  We were seven in the group who witnessed the gorgeous lanterns and each lantern representing it's Barangay for different category.  Each lantern measures 20 feet and have hundred or even thousand of lights bulbs.  The lanterns were really gigantic and the people behind it exerted a great effort just for the title and to give happiness to every people.  Want to see the video??

Since we arrived at 8:16PM, we missed 3 lanterns, because the program started at around 7PM, so next year, I don't want to be late again. In that single event, there were thousand of people from different places enjoyed the dancing lights which was really stunning in the night.

The organizer made this event into a world-class Festival that every people should see every year.  So, next year, I am just hoping that I still have time for this huge event in Pampanga.

Congratulations to our 2012 Giant Lantern Festival Competition (Ligligan Parul) Winners! :D

Grand Champion: Brgy. Del Pilar Giant Lantern
1st Runner Up: Brgy. Telabastagan
2nd Runner Up: Brgy. San Jose