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terns were simultaneously lit and played until their
bulbs exploded or went dead; the lantern with the
most number of remaining lit bulbs won. The competition
lasted well until daybreak of Christmas
day.
The lanterns started assuming their gigantic
proportions only in 1965, probably due to the competing
barangays’ increasing prosperity, and of
course, the Kapampangans’ natural tendency to
overspend just to produce a thing of beauty.
Acknowledged as the pioneer in modern lantern-making
was Mario Datu of barrio Del Pilar; he
is credited as the first to use iron framing for lanterns
(previously they used bamboo frames) and
for a more scientific mechanism to make the lights
dance (previously they used only a kalakati, where
one would run an iron rod against a row of nails).
The rivals in the competition in those early days
were Datu and Susing Maglalang of barrio San Jose.
Later other names became by-words: Erning Diwa
of Sta. Lucia; Emilio Dizon, Gregorio Miranda and
a Mr. Santos of Del Pilar. A Mr. Linson was known
for his dinukit a parul, or lanterns using paper cardboards
and layers to give the impression of having
been “carved.”
It was Crising Valencia who invented the now-famous rotor
system, in which a rotating cylinder (originally made of wood,
then of copperplate, today of tin sheet covered with masking tape)
is manually driven to make the lantern’s lights dance. A few years
ago, a group was commissioned by the city government to computerize
a giant lantern; the lantern-makers, however, have since
returned to the more traditional method.
The parts of a traditional San Fernando lantern are as follows:
tambor (the lantern’s round middle part), siku-siku (the
right-angled designs emanating from the center which give the
lantern its distinctive star shape), palimbun (circular shapes on
the outer rim) and puntetas (the rays of the lantern).
If the San Fernando lantern dances and has psychedelic colors,
the Angeles lantern is a dainty all-white star with a pair or
dangling tails representing the rays of the Star of Bethlehem. The
Top, the rotor system responsible for the giant lantern’s dancing lights,
invented by a Kapampangan; above, the parts of a lantern
tradition of lubenas in Angeles is stronger today than in San
Fernando (but not quite as strong as in Mabalacat); Mariano Henson
wrote that in 1830, when the first La Naval was held in Angeles,
residents were already processing their lit lanterns around town.
But while the lanterns of San Fernando grew in size by leaps and
bounds, those in Angeles basically remained the same: small and
white, with lacey cut-outs pasted on the star; they even retained
the quaint fish lanterns with movable fin and tail—a vestige of
the folksy past of lubenas when organizers had to use gimmicks to
attract participants and impress observers. Only one person,
Eulogio Catahan (a.k.a. Apung Eloy) of Brgy. Cutcut still makes
fish lanterns (he also makes burarul and gurion, or kites), and
only one family, in Brgy. San Nicolas, still makes the white lanterns
which are unique to Angeles.
Ivan Henares
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