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Sunday, January 19, 2003
Niño wears shoe made in Carcar
By Lorenzo P. Niñal
WHERE would the Sto. Niño shop for shoes if he were present physically today? Most probably in Carcar, Cebu.
Playfully pushing to the edge the Sto. Niño’s legendary penchant for playing pranks on devotees, the Carcar United Footwear Manufacturers Association Inc. (Cufmai) will feature in today’s Sinulog grand parade the Holy Child as “wearing” the world’s biggest shoe.
“The Holy Child, in His Divine Wisdom, must be wearing the biggest of shoes, after all, He has sole control of the world in His hands,” Cufmai said in putting the giant shoe as Carcar’s official entry to the parade’s float category.
A giant globe will be seen mounted on the shoe. Atop the globe is perched the image of the Sto. Niño, which incidentally happens to carry in His hand a globe, too.
It will appear that the image is more like standing on top of the shoe than actually wearing it, and having to care for more than one earth—the one in his hand, the other he is stepping on.
Cufmai would have wanted the Sto. Niño to actually wear the shoe. But sculpting a Sto. Niño image with a size commensurate to the seven-meter-long shoe is just impossible, said Nicepuro Apura, a Carcar barangay captain and Cufmai member.
Besides, the Cufmai creation is not a pair, and the Holy Child is not known to have walked the earth with only his right shoe on.
Stories abound of the Sto. Niño strolling in rice fields, on the beach and just about anywhere in what believers describe as miraculous apparitions of the Holy Child.
Tales further tell about churchgoers wondering inside the Church on Sunday why on earth their Sto. Niño image has amorsiko in His robe and His shoes muddied.
Cufmai, therefore, wanted the giant shoe to symbolize what the Holy Child loves doing—walking. At the same time, the shoe will symbolize the spirit of the Sinulog celebration, which is “a walk in faith.”
Most of all, though, the shoe “is symbolic of the enormous task the Child King places upon himself: governing the universe and every single creation in it.”
After the Sinulog, Cufmai will start the construction of the left shoe, which is expected to be finished in November, in time for Carcar’s Kabkaban festival and the next Sinulog.
Finally, a complete pair of walking shoes for the itinerant Child.
(January 19, 2003 issue)
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