Couples blessed by joining fertility dance return to Obando to say thanks聽
Elderly women of Obando do the fertility dance, presumably for other married women who could not bear children. —File photo from the Philippine Daily Inquirer
OBANDO, Bulacan, Philippines — Swaying their hips again at the three-day annual fertility dance in this town, the couples who were finally blessed with children after joining the ritual have returned to this town as a thanks to patron saints San Pascual Baylon, Santa Clara, and Nuestra Señora de Salambao.
On the first day of the festivities on Saturday, Feast Day of San Pascual Baylon, Theo Reyes, 46, from adjacent Bulakan town, danced at the thoroughfare of Obando, just outside the Santa Clara, San Pascual Baylon, and Nuestra Señora de Salambao parish, in thanksgiving to the three saints.
It was his 25th year of joining the festivity and leading a group of fellow devotees who came for different reasons, including asking for forgiveness of sins and a blessing of fertility. The tradition, which was done mostly by women in the past, has also attracted men.
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Susana dela Cruz and her husband from Bocaue town joined the fertility dance not to ask for a child but to thank the saints for the daughter they got out of their devotion.
Dela Cruz said, she and her husband started participating in the fertility dance in 2020, and in September 2023, she became pregnant.
Hundreds of devotees from different places in and outside Bulacan come to the three-day feast, which ends on Monday. /lzb
