Every December, the City of San Fernando in Pampanga lights up with the Giant Lantern Festival, known in Kapampangan as Ligligan Parul — the lantern showdown. San Fernando is widely called the Christmas Capital of the Philippines, and its lantern-making tradition goes back more than a century, growing from the religious lubenas processions of the early 1900s into today’s competition of giant parul.
The competing lanterns are built by master lantern makers from the city’s barangays — names followers of the festival know well, such as Telabastagan, San Juan, Sta. Lucia, Del Pilar and Dolores. Each giant lantern is several metres across, carries thousands of bulbs, and plays out choreographed patterns of light and colour through mechanical rotors, all synchronised to music. The lanterns are judged on competition night, usually held on a Saturday in mid-December, and the winning entries stay on exhibition through the Christmas season.
The festival in photos, 2009–2022
I’ve been photographing Ligligan Parul since 2009. This gallery gathers my coverage across the years — from the Flickr-era frames of the 2009–2013 festivals to the 2022 competition, where San Juan took Grand Champion ahead of Telabastagan and Sta. Lucia. Click any photo to open the original post.
Photographing the giant lanterns
The lanterns only come alive after dark, so arrive before sundown to get your bearings and a good spot facing the display area. Exposure is a balancing act: the bulbs are intensely bright against a black sky, so underexposing slightly keeps the colours saturated instead of blown out. A tripod helps for the long, slow sequences, but some of the best frames are handheld crowd-and-lantern scenes that show just how big these parul are.
All photos on this page are from my own coverage of the festival. See also my galleries of Maleldo and the Cutud Lenten rites — San Fernando’s other great tradition — and of heritage churches across the Philippines.