12/01/2023
The Ati-Atihan festival is a Philippine festival held annually in January in honor of the Santo Niño (Holy Child or Infant Jesus) in several towns of the province of Aklan, Panay Island. The biggest celebration is held during the third Sunday of January in the town of Kalibo, the province's capital. The name Ati-Atihan means "to imitate the Ati people".
The original celebration was known as the Fiesta de Santo Niño, which dates back to at least the 17th century. It was part of the Catholic "fiesta system" employed by the Spanish colonial government to reinforce the reducciones policy that aimed to resettle natives on planned settlements built around a local church. In the 1950s, the festival, along with similar fiestas around the country celebrating the Santo Niño (like the Sinulog) increasingly began to resemble the Brazilian Carnival and the New Orleans Mardi Gras, incorporating music, street dancing, and body painting. By the 1960s, the festival became even more commercialized as the Philippine Department of Tourism heavily promoted local festivals to national prominence. The festival now included elaborate exotic costumes (inspired by tribal attire from Papua New Guinea, Africa, and India). It culminated in 1972, when the festival's name was officially changed to Ati-Atihan.