In the Philippines, what giant lantern festival is held annually in San Fernando at Christmas?

In the Philippines, the Giant Lantern Festival is the annual Christmas celebration held in San Fernando, Pampanga.

Known locally as Ligligan Parul, the festival is a competition featuring enormous, illuminated parol lanterns made by teams from San Fernando’s barangays. The city is widely called the “Christmas Capital of the Philippines” because of its lantern-making tradition and famously long Christmas season.

The festival’s roots reach back to smaller religious lantern processions connected with the nine-day Christmas novena, or simbang gabi. Lanterns reportedly began growing larger and more elaborate after the provincial capital moved from Bacolor to San Fernando in 1904. Electricity transformed the designs in the 1930s, allowing lights to flash in complex patterns.

It is sometimes confused with Sinulog or Ati-Atihan, but those are major Santo Niño festivals in the Visayas. Pahiyas, meanwhile, is a harvest festival in Quezon province. The Giant Lantern Festival is specifically a Christmas lantern competition in Pampanga.