SANTO NIÑO, REVISITED

By Herman M. Lagon

Photo by Al Destacamento

January has a peculiar way of turning our streets into moving sanctuaries. Drums replace bells, barefoot dancers claim asphalt, and traffic gives way to prayer—sometimes clumsy, sometimes loud, often beautiful. From Kalibo to Iloilo City to Cebu City, the calendar thickens with devotion. Ati-Atihan, Dinagyang, Sinulog, Halad, Sakay Sakay, Lakbayaw, and Kahimunan do not simply announce fiestas; they reveal how Filipinos remember God—with sweat, noise, repetition, and stubborn joy. The Santo Niño does not arrive quietly in January. He comes carried on shoulders, stitched into costumes, shouted in chants that sound half-prayer, half-plea. And perhaps that is already the first clue: this devotion has never been neat, nor easily contained.

I no longer move through these celebrations the way I once did. Age, work, distance, and questions have thinned my presence. This week, as churches and schools mark the feast—Ateneo de Iloilo among them, with my Jesuit mentor Fr. Manny Uy Jr., SJ, giving his homily and good friend Fr. Braulio Dahunan Jr. SJ, presiding—I find myself more an observer than a participant, following the celebration from afar, often online. I notice details I once took for granted. I ask questions I did not bother to ask when I was younger and more certain. How necessary is physical participation for faith to remain alive? If I were not Catholic—and at times I try to imagine that vantage point—what would I see in these processions: excess, beauty, contradiction, or all of it at once? What theology hides beneath the glitter and drumbeats? And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: what does it mean to keep dancing for a Child who never grows up in our statues, while the world around us demands adult courage?

These questions are not declarations of disbelief. They are signs of wrestling. I say this plainly: I remain one of those who wrestle with faith, Santo Niño included. I do not always stand squarely within belief, but neither do I stand outside the meaning it carries for many. I have seen a kind of faith that does not wait for certainty. I saw it in my late father’s quiet gestures, in friends who whispered Pit Señor or Viva Señor Santo Niño not as slogan but as reflex, in jeepney drivers who fixed small Niño statues to cracked dashboards with more care than they gave themselves, in homes where the image is placed where the eye naturally rests, and in revelers who lift it through the streets as if it were family. Their devotion did not argue its case. It endured illness, poverty, and loss without becoming performative. That kind of faith, even when one does not fully share it, resists easy dismissal. It asks to be taken seriously.

Ilongga theologian Helen C. Romero (2016) reads devotion to the Santo Niño through a postcolonial lens, arguing that it functions not only as religious practice but as a cultural way of seeing the Filipino self across colonial and postcolonial history. Introduced by Magellan in 1521, the image was gradually indigenized—not rejected, but reinterpreted to reflect Filipino realities. The Santo Niño became a figure associated with hunger, vulnerability, and dependence—a God imagined as approachable rather than armored. Over time, the devotion became a bridge: to the past Filipinos inherited and to a future they continue to negotiate, whether in Kalibo’s soot-darkened streets or in parishes scattered across the Filipino diaspora.

That bridge, however, is not without cracks. Critics—academics, theologians, atheists, agnostics, even believers—have long pointed out uncomfortable tensions. There is the risk of fatalism, where suffering is endured rather than confronted. There is the colonial shadow, where a faith introduced by conquest can be mistaken for submission. There is commercialization, where devotion competes with sponsorship banners and VIP bleachers. Filipino anthropologist Julius Bautista and others have warned how official narratives sometimes crowd out quieter, less convenient meanings. These critiques matter. They prevent devotion from drifting into complacency. Yet critique alone misses what actually happens on the ground: faith here is rarely abstract. It is embodied, negotiated, argued with, and still chosen—sometimes despite doubt, not because doubt has vanished.

This is where January’s festivals become revealing rather than distracting. Ati-Atihan leans into rawness and unruly energy. Dinagyang thrives on discipline, choreography, and fierce competition. Sinulog moves carefully between solemn ritual and civic spectacle. Each one reflects a different Filipino temperament, yet all orbit the same Child. Strip away the costumes and props, and what remains is movement—forward, backward, sideways—never static. The Santo Niño, for all His stillness as icon, keeps people moving. Even for those who do not fully share the belief, that movement complicates the idea that devotion simply encourages passivity.

The Jesuits, though not custodians of the original image—that role belongs to the Augustinians—have long helped Filipinos think more carefully about what they are doing when they kneel, dance, or question. In classrooms, retreats, and homilies, Jesuit and Ignatian-formed educators have encouraged reflection without fear, urging people to notice where devotion consoles and where it unsettles. They have framed faith not as escape, but as examination: How does this ritual shape my choices? Whose dignity does it protect? What kind of adult does this Child demand I become? Without leaning on heavy theological language, this approach quietly redirects devotion from comfort toward accountability.

Accountability is precisely where the Santo Niño becomes challenging—in a productive way. Romero’s notion of pagbabangong-dangal, the raising of dignity, is useful here. The Child does not sanctify helplessness; He exposes it. A God imagined as vulnerable refuses to let vulnerability be ignored. Even from a reflective distance, this has implications that reach beyond church walls. In a country where children remain among the most exploited, where education gaps persist, where poverty is inherited like a surname, reverence for the Santo Niño risks sounding hollow if it does not sharpen moral attention. The festivals, at their best, suggest that joy and justice are not opposites. They are meant to move together.

Perhaps that is why these celebrations continue to unsettle outsiders—and sometimes insiders too. Touching images, kissing glass, dancing prayers into exhaustion can look excessive. But Filipino devotion has never been minimalist. It insists that belief, or even the search for belief, lives in bodies. Anthropologists have long noted how tactile practices express a conviction that what brushes against the holy is changed by it. One need not fully share that conviction to recognize its coherence within the culture. As the Catechism for Filipino Catholics cautions, the risk lies in stopping at the Child and refusing the adult Christ who calls for difficult discipleship. The warning stands. Yet the response is not less devotion, but clearer understanding.

Watching January unfold from a slight distance, I realize that the Santo Niño persists not because Filipinos avoid hard questions, but because they keep asking them—sometimes mid-dance, mid-life, mid-crisis. Faith here is not a museum piece. It is a conversation, often loud, sometimes awkward, rarely finished. I may no longer join every procession or every sadsad, but I recognize the discipline behind them: the choice to show up, year after year, even when certainty feels thin. That discipline, whether religious or cultural, is not trivial. It shapes memory. It teaches endurance.

Revisiting the Santo Niño today means allowing devotion to be complex. It reflects the Filipino soul—its warmth, humor, doubt, and resilience. The Child remains not because faith is complete, but because the questions continue to matter. And as long as Filipinos continue to dance, doubt, observe, critique, and return, the Santo Niño will not need to be defended. He will simply keep walking with them—through January streets and beyond.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.