Christmas celebration in the Heritage City of Vigan.

Filipinos are indeed the world's most Christmas-oriented people. We start recognizing the Christmas season as early as September with radio stations playing Christmas songs on the first day of September. In every city or town in the Philippines, each has its own way to celebrate the season. In the World Heritage City of Vigan, its citizens gather as crowd to participate in the unveiling of the Christmas tree, a yearly tradition. Bigueños gathered in number to participate in this annual tradition.The Christmas tree was designed with mannequins dressed with colorful and very detailed (up close) costumes from head to foot. The unveiling happened after the Raniag Street Dancing showdown, also held in front of the city hall.


The Heritage City of Vigan officially marks the start of the Christmas season in the City Government conducted the simultaneous lighting of this year's colorful thirty-seven foot Christmas Tree in front of Vigan City Hall and the Christmas Village at Vigan Conservation Complex last November 27, 2020. Due to the pandemic, the City Government restricted the public to attend this year’s opening ceremony but instead have them witness it live online through the City’s official Facebook Page. The many traditions and rich culture of Vigan is part of the Bigueños' social well-being. We get sad when we don't find people dancing on the streets to the tune of our culture and heritage. We get mad when our plazas don't stage events and shows. Indeed, we make it sure that these events will happen.


Regardless of all the odds caused by the pandemic, the Christmas vibes in the Heritage City continuous as the annual Artes Ita Paskua of the City Government of Vigan got its way last December 07 -17, 2020 with the new normal set-up in which most of the events were done through online and the others were with limited participants to comply into the Minimum Health Standards set by the City Covid-19 Task Force. Our Bigueño culture is so rich that it is not enough to express it in words—we need to express them in festivities and manifest it in our intangible good traditions for other people to understand.

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