What or where did this originated from? I honestly do not know. All I know is, this happens every Sunday before Ash Wednesday. I would like to think that this is in relation to some Catholic beliefs. I always think that this is how we reenact the baptism of Christ. If Germany has this so-called "Fasching" or "Karneval", where people parades on various costumes on a Monday before the Ash Wednesday, we do have this buling buling that we do on a Sunday before the Ash Wednesday. I remember in my former high school, our Fair Event always occur a week before Ash Wednesday, hence, the last day had always been our buling buling celebration, regardless on what day it fell. Funny how our school administration prepares for this last day event, stalls start to sell water guns and water balloons, and then the drums of water suddenly becomes available in the middle of the basketball court and volleyball court. Water hoses are all set on each faucets on all lavatory all over the campus. Then, at exactly 1pm, water fight is everywhere. I always go home wet. No one in our school went home dry. It was fun! What was even funnier was, we also throw water on our service vans and service drivers and even on guest students from other schools. We wanted to share with them the fun and to literally make all people who step onto our school grounds wet.
I may have survived this event today, but honestly, I miss getting wet by the street. I miss those times at Canossa Academy Lipa City wherein I went home soaking wet, literally. I missed being a victim of all these water fight. And with this temperature of around 34 degrees Celsius, I really wanted to get that big splash of water under the scorching sun.
*credit to the owner of the photo, Mr. John Javellana. The photo is actually from Balayan Fiesta, I cannot find a photo for buling-buling event, but they are just the same, water fight along the streets, minus the lechon parade which only happens during Balayan Fiesta.
Buling means dirt or dirty in the Bisayan dialect. It could mean the same in Batangas. So if one is dirty douse with water and cleanse yourself. Take it literally in the religious sense and thats it.
ReplyDeleteHi! Thank you for that information, and it really made sense. :-)
ReplyDeleteGod bless!
Bitte schon.Good luck and keep on blogging.
ReplyDeleteHello Anne, thanks for your description of buling-buling as it is today. In den Tagalog-Dictionary of Leo James English it says, bulingbuling was celebrated by way of splashing around water on the feast of St. John the Baptist on June 21. He doesn't mention a province. It seems to be connected to baptism however. And in his Tagalog translation of Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell", Rizal uses bulingbuling for the German word Fasnachtsumzug. Your intuition might have been very exact. Greetings from Zurich, Annette Hug (annettehug@bluewin.ch)
ReplyDeleteHi Annette! Sorry for such a late response, I had my comment notification disabled. There are a lot of possibilities on what that tradition might mean, and Rizal came frtom our neighbor town, that's why he had used the term the same way I used it since we are both Tagalog. The other description of Leo James is another event, and it usually happens in the town of Balayan, Batangas and not in the whole Philippines. What I wrote here is usually (in the old days at most) done all over the Philippines. :-)
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