This year’s edition of the BacoLaodiat Festival will not push through to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
The annual festival is held in Bacolod City to usher in the Chinese New Year, which falls on Friday, February 12, this year.
BacoLaodiat Festival chair Oddette Ong-Gomez, in a statement today, February 10, said: “in consonance with the muted festival flares nationwide amid the global pandemic, the Board Members of the BacoLaodiat Inc. and the organizers of the BacoLaodiat Festival deem it proper to forgo the holding of the 16th BacoLaodiat Festival this Lunar year of the Metal Ox.”
However, she pointed out that even without the fireworks displays and the spectacle of dragon and lion dances, “the spirit of the BacoLaodiat Festival is still very much alive with the modest yet, meaningful display of lotuses and highlighted by the Zodiac Animal Ox as centerpiece currently on display at the Bacolod City Government Center grounds.”
“Like the lotuses which grow in muddy water and are able to rise above the mud and bloom with remarkable beauty, we are one with Bacolodnons in praying we will all rise from the adversities brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. And may the lanterns represent the light at the end of the tunnel that we all aspire for to reach and come out victorious in this global fight,” she said.
She added, “as we remain sensitive to the call of the times, like the Ox, may we also remain strong in our faith that all our hard work this New Year will be rewarded with luck and prosperity in the coming years.”
BacoLaodiat was coined from the words “Bacolod” and “Lao Diat,” a Fookien word for celebration.*