109th Giant Lantern Festival set Dec. 16
CITY OF SAN FERNANDO— The 109th Giant Lantern Festival (GLF) will again light this city’s skyline on December 16 at a local mall here as the Giant Lantern Festival Foundation Inc. (GLFI) launched the 100 Days of Giant Lanterns as a way to count the remaining days before the event.
The launching also featured the signing of the memorandum of agreement between GLFI officials and Laus Group’s CLTV 36 for the exclusive coverage of the festival. This year also features the Giant Lantern Festival Caravan Tours which features the touring of giant lanterns in different malls in Luzon.
GLFI president Alfrito Mah said that this year’s participants include 11 barangays, which are Calulut, Del Pilar, Del Rosario, Pandaras, San Jose, San Juan, San Nicolas, Sindalan, Sta. Lucia, Sto. Nino and Tel ebast agan .
The lanterns are made and funded by the community, aside from the funding subsidy coming from the city government. Lantern makers, electricians and ordinary folk volunteer time and effort to make the lanterns beautiful and up to competition standards. This is not a surprise since the winning barangay takes the honor of having produced the best lantern for the season and each award is a bragging right against competing barangays.
The Giant Lantern Festival has become an annual festival held in December (Saturday before Christmas Eve) in this city. The popularity of the festival has earned the province the nickname “Christmas Capital of the Philippines.”
The GLF is a competition of 10 feet to 12 feet height lanterns that are made by barangays with standing lantern-making traditions. The award is seen as recognition on top of the significance of the lantern industry here in helping local tourism and craftsmanship of local craftsmen and artisans.