The Pahiyas Festival Transforms Lucban Into a Living Canvas
A Scream of Colors and Cultures and Customs as a Tribute to the Spirit of Labor
For the Oriental yeomen of Lucban, farming is a labor of love.
The Pahiyas Festival is one of the longest-running legacy festivals arising from the Philippine archipelago, celebrated on every fifteenth of May. Pahiyas is evolved from two terms: “hiyas”, which means a rare stone, and “payas”, which means to embellish something for an offering.
Tts far-flung origins date back to the sixteenth century, of farmers ceremoniously offering their crops to the genius loci of the mystical Mount Banahaw, where stories of hidden treasures, spiritual encounters, and healing properties circulate the sacred site that had long been the destination of many pilgrims.
Many fiestas in the Philippines started out as indigenous rituals that were inculcated with Christianized connotations overtime, and one case in point is the Pahiyas Festival.
The farmers began bringing their produce to the churches, then to the outside of their homes when the churches could not facilitate all the harvest, and it soon morphed into a feast of thanksgiving to venerate the historical patron saint of farmers and agricultural laborers himself, San Isidro Labrador.
His name can be directly translated as Saint Isidore the Laborer. A symbol of a bountiful harvest and the joy of labor, that the labor of a person should be fairly rewarded, that labor should be something universally loved and not universally exploited, and that a person is entitled the sweat on their brow.
In an age of low wages and diminishing returns, this helps remind us to appreciate the effort of those who work, toil, and sweat in the farmlands, for they’ve been under the radar in Philippine society for too long.
Patron Saint of Farming
Isidro was nothing more than a modest farmhand famed for his piety, and according to myth and legend, King Alfonso VIII donated a wooden ark to hold the uncorrupted body of the saint, in thanksgiving for his intervention at the Battle Las Navas de Tolosa.
Canonized in 1622, San Isidro Labrador stands out as being neither an erudite scholar nor religious to the extreme, rather he is known as a working-class saint who was a modest farmhand favored by God and often accompanied by a team of heavenly oxen driven by angels. In spite of his busyness, he devoted time for morning Mass, which actually caused him to be late for the fields.
There is nothing the median Filipino loves more than festivities, and there were many dedicated to San Isidro Labrador, such as the Sikoy-Sikoy Festival of San Fernando that puts a pin on their rich sea life, the Agawan Festival which is also known as the Happy Pandemonium, or the Kneeling Carabao Festival where trained carabaos kneel to the patron saint of farming.
But the one our eyes should be honed in on is the one in Lucban.
The Pahiyas of Lucban, Quezon
In mid-May, tourists and natives alike get to enjoy the annual Pahiyas Festival in all its glorious fun. The festival proper ushers in a rainbow spectacle of home decorations, delicious delicacies, and iconography of the saint plastered all over the roads.
Lucban’s narrow streets and endearing architecture makes for a picturesque sight. In this bright and colorful parade, houses are ornately designed with flowers, fruits and other flora. Vegetables are everywhere for visitors to taste and revel in. Hundreds of homes take part in a competition, where the best design wins a prize.
Colorful kiping, or rice wafers, are made from glutinous ground rice shaped using different leaves and brightly colored to be yellow, fuchsia, red, and green. Kiping was said to have been invented during the Manila-Acapulco Galleon Trade. These are assembled to form lanterns, also known as arangyas.
One of the coolest parts about the festival is the “kalas”, where folks try to grab as much produce as they can from the decorated houses, which usually occurs at the end of a festival, the climax of a very good time in Lucban.
It is a high point of artistic ingenuity for the community of Lucban. The town becomes animated with life and movement and spirit, and it is fantastic to look forward to.
If you ever find yourself in the Philippines in May, make sure to add the Pahiyas Festival in Lucban to your itinerary. Support the locals by being part of this wonderful extravaganza.
Bibliography
Bustillo, Marta. “Images of Saint Isidro the Farmer.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 104, no. 416 (2015): 423–32. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24640792.
Legarde, Lysias. “Pahiyas Festival: Everything You Need to Know.” hicaps, May 14, 2022.
Reid, Jessica. “Everything You Need to Know About the Filipino Harvest Festival Pahiyas.” Wanderlust, March 18, 2025.
Stewart, Daniel. “An Everyman Saint: St. Isidore the Farmer.” The Catholic Gentleman, May 15, 2014. https://catholicgentleman.com/2014/05/an-everyman-saint-st-isidore-the-farmer/
I was there for the 2010 edition. It was super hot, chaotic, and loud. But also fun to watch the houses compete for best decor 😊 Thanks for this historical context, I appreciate it!