Damili Festival

The Damili Festival is being held annually on the last Sunday of December. This is a thanksgiving event for the town of San Nicolas in Ilocos Norte for the blessings she receives. It’s a celebration of 100 years of golden harvest of rice. This also has the objective to promote the pottery industry. The local term for pot is damili. The festival is being sponsored by the National Commission for the Culture and the Arts. The festival is on its 5^th year now.

The dance parade depicts the different stages of making pots or damili. From the stage of shoveling soil down to the burning of the pots to give extra strength. The planting and harvesting of rice was mainly incorporated in the dance steps. All the baranggays of the said town participated in the competition. One contingent produced and displayed a giant damili. All of the dancers wore colorful costumes with designs inspired by the damili. They danced to one uniform music. Handicrafts like hats, baskets, bags, small pots were displayed. Even cows and carts were paraded around. There were some old ladies who placed damili on top of their head while puffing big tobacco on their mouth.