Image credits: sarahlynnpablo.wordpress.com
As early as September, the Christmas spirit can already be felt in the country. The Philippines is one of the countries if not the only one which loves Christmas so much that it would need more than a month of celebration. Well, to top that, it even extends to the next months. Imagine, when the "ber" months start, the Christmas vibes starts as well. You are Filipino if you can relate to this.
This can be felt by the looping Christmas songs playing on the radio, shopping malls are starting to display Christmas decorations, everyone is preparing for their upcoming parties and a lot more Christmas related activities.
Huge Christmas trees are being lit up, children will be looking forward to meeting their godparents and even would look forward to having new sets of clothes as presents from all their loved ones.
As part of the Christmas decorations, Filipinos have their own unique traditional decoration which had been present ever since the old days. I am not aware as to when this has started but I am referring to the "parol" or the star.
While the term Parol means something agreed orally, or in writing but not under seal (information reference: Google Dictionary), in the Philippines, it means a different thing and it is Christmas related.
What is a Parol ?
A parol is an ornamental, star-shaped Christmas lantern from the Philippines. It is traditionally made out of bamboo and paper and comes in various sizes and shapes, but generally the basic star pattern remains dominant.
The design of the parol evokes the Star of Bethlehem that guided the Three Kings to the manger. It also symbolizes the victory of light over darkness and the Filipinos' hope and goodwill during the Christmas season.
Information reference: wikipedia.org
The word parol comes from the Spanish word for lantern: farol
Today, let's deal with the different ways how Filipinos make our own parols. Since we were young, we have been trained on how to make these and every single year since we started going to school, we have our annual parol lantern projects.
In line with that, I have enumerated here the number of ways how we make them, this is on reference to my experiences as a child, as highschool student and even in college.
Tinfoil Parol
Vendors display their homemade tinfoil stars. Image credits: langyaw.com
Probably the easiest and usually the ones we make when we were in gradeschool. We were taught by our teachers on the process which is really really easy at the same time.
It only requires three materials, the tinfoil, scissors and staplers.
Image shows paper because I couldn't find one with tinfoils. Image credits: Amy O'Neill Houck via Flickr.com
This is done by cutting the tinfoil in square sizes, in equal size as well and then folded into a triangle, we then starts cutting a few lines off the sides of the folded tinfoil but we got to leave a few inches away from the edge of the foil, three cuts would be fine but if you prefer more, that will also be fine it would normally depend on the size you wanted for your parol.
After this, with the use of staplers, join both ends of the foil, this will create a tube-like form, do the same steps with the other cut strips. Five stapled foils will be joined together at each corner, making sure that the form will finally make the strips into a star.
End product looks like this. Photo credits: www.pinterest.com
It's quite hard to explain this in words so it is way better to show you the steps in a video, unfortunately, I couldn't create a video right now and I have not found any video which shows the same. So I guess I'll just have to move on to the next item.
Bamboo and Papel de japon Parol
This would be the most common way of making a parol, the design would depend on the maker but there's a basic construction of the star.
The star frames, some more bamboos required! Image credits: www.instructables.com
Its output would be 3D and it takes more effort and time to create this depending on the planned design and materials. However, the basic structure is composed of the bamboo splits masterly tied together with a thread to make a 3D star which will then be covered with paper crafts or papel de japon as what we commonly used in the country.
So one can start with bamboo splits, connect the ends of the bamboos and tied them up. Some more bamboo splits will be placed in its central part to give a bulky feel to the frame.
Some other materials for the parol. Image credits: www.instructables.com
After being about to construct the base frame star, the next step would be to cover it with papel de japon, normally we see red, white and blue colors but it really doesn't matter. Whatever color is okay, it would be up to the creator of the star parol.
Next step after covering the star is to design it accordingly. I like my star parol to be full of tiny bits of squared papel de japon. Each sigle one by one inch of papel de japon will be pasted into the star, I can then create a pattern in each single side of the star to give it a complicated look.
The traditional parol lantern in the Philippines. Image credits: remit2homeblog.wordpress.com
As soon as I am done with that, I would have to make the star's tails. Traditionally, there should be two but it would depend on the creator again, I have seen other stars with five tails too.
The tails again are made out of the same paper but cut in a way that it creates this cascading look. Most of the time, we would be creating two colors of these mostly white and red ones.
Video credits: Gene A. via YouTube.com
Making these every year for school projects made it easy for me to finish one but I still have to ask my father to build me the bar bamboo structure.
Indigenous Parol
After the two easy types of parols, here comes the complicated one, the indigenous parol which are usually being created for competition purposes.
Image credits: Constantine Agustin via www.vigattintourism.com
Indigenous materials are those which have been considered already as trash or something of no use to the person who had disposed it but definitely a great addition to an art of someone else.
Examples of these materials are plastic bottles, tree leaves, husks, papers, tin cans and whatever which can suit to the design concept by the person involved.
Image credits: obatkencingnanah.info
Some of these designs involved nature products too as mentioned earlier, tree leaves and coconut by products are the usual ones which can be used and which wins in these competition.
These competitions are usually because of government's efforts.
Christmas Trees decorations at Bakers' Hill Puerto Princesa Palawan. Image credits: Jean Beltran-Figues via bitLanders.com
One of the remarkable pieces which I had seen before was the Christmas tree made of soda plastic bottles at the Puerto Prinsesa's Baker's Hill. There was consistency and artistry in it that it was still beautiful even if they were only made of recycled bottles. Yes, there were more than just one Christmas tree there.
Video credits: Alfeve Niebre via YouTube.com
In fact, other decorations also were made of recycled plastic bottles which were definitely interesting.
There's more amazing and interesting kinds of star parols in the country which I might be dealing with in the future but for now, that's the most common ones which can be seen in any part of our country.
