From ‘mud people’ to water fests: Filipinos mark feast of John the Baptist

MANILA, Philippines – Filipinos celebrated the feast of John the Baptist on Monday, June 24, by observing traditions that mirror the life of one of the Catholic Church’s most famous saints.

Barangay Bibiclat in the town of Aliaga, Nueva Ecija, marked the annual Taong Putik (Mud People) Festival on Monday, listed in the Catholic calendar as John the Baptist’s birthday.

Hundreds of residents of Bibiclat, a village of around 8,300 people, bathed themselves in mud and hung dried banana leaves on their bodies. By doing this, they sought to imitate the appearance of John the Baptist, who is described in the Gospel of Mark as having been “clothed in camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist” as he “fed on locusts and wild honey.”

Covering themselves in mud symbolizes repentance from sin, the local parish said. It highlights “the grace of the human being’s return to God, which John the Baptist proclaimed in the desert,” said the Diocesan Shrine and Parish of Saint John the Baptist in a Facebook post on Sunday, June 23.

John the Baptist, a cousin of Jesus, is exalted in the Catholic Church as the Messiah’s forerunner. Many parishes are named after him in the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic country with rituals inherited from 300 years of Spanish colonial rule. 

On Monday, the feast of John the Baptist was also celebrated in the cities of San Juan and Parañaque, but using a different symbol: water.

In these cities, but most especially in San Juan which is named after the saint, devotees douse each other with water – not sparing even passersby – in memory of John the Baptist who baptized his followers and even Jesus in the Jordan River.

In the Rappler Communities app, faith chat room users Michael Dalogdog and Anton Maria Francesco Carabeo shared photos from the annual Basaan (Dousing of Water) Festival in Barangay Don Galo in Parañaque, which was once a coastal town and now a bustling city of more than 686,000 people.

Carabeo, a 24-year-old licensed professional teacher, said in Rappler’s faith chat room that it was “quite nostalgic” for him to attend the Basaan Festival. Carabeo said his father, who “hails from the barrio in which this takes place,” would often share “that the celebrations started when Parañaque had its beautiful coastlines.” There was even a fluvial procession back then.

“Sadly, it seems that the Basaan has leveled down to mere revelry and partying,” Carabeo said, attributing it to “lack of catechism, a root cause of most problems in the Church nowadays.” – Rappler.com