Celebrate Filipino Culture at the Long Beach Parol Lantern Festival
Long Beach’s Filipino community, one of the largest in the country, will celebrate its culture and Christmas traditions during the Long Beach Parol Lantern Festival at KUBO LB, December 17. It’s the fifth year the festival has been held in Long Beach, home to more than 14,000 residents originally born in the Philippines.
The free, six-hour event – held from 2-8 p.m. – celebrates both the struggles and triumphs of the community through the creation of the parol, a five-point, star-shaped lantern traditionally made from paper and bamboo and lit to signify finding hope and light in the darkness sometimes cast by life.
Attendees will not only be able to create their own parol, but enjoy delicious Filipino cuisine as well as live musical and dance performances. Though last year’s well-attended festival was held in Downtown Long Beach, this year it will be held both inside and outside at KUBO LB located at the Bixby Knolls Centre of Innovation and Arts (345 E. Carson St.). Like many live events held post-pandemic, the festival is expected to attract an enthusiastic crowd.
The Filipino community is a vital one to Long Beach, much of it concentrated on the city’s westside, a portion of which is unofficially known as “Little Manila.” The festival not only showcases one of the community’s most honored traditions, but many times highlights and seeks to assist important causes and people in need. For instance, in 2020, the festival was used to fundraise for the hundreds of thousands of people affected by the devastating typhoons in the Philippines that year.
As in previous years, the festival welcomes the community to celebrate and learn about Filipino culture, whether through sharing the conversation, creation of a parol lantern, live performances or, of course, enjoying the delicious Filipino fare.
