Filipino Culture and Traditions that have Changed or Gone over the Years

Filipino Traditions that have Changed or Gone Over the Years
Josh Fishy 11/19/2015

Filipino culture and tradition are a mixture of those brought by visitors in the past and those practiced by the locals before nonnatives came along.

What Filipino traditions that need to be changed?

Over the years, especially at the outset of information age and technological advances, a lot of these customs have changed or sadly gone. The young are so engrossed in their gadgets or social media that they shrug off keeping some Filipino practices which the past generations held very dear.

In random order, we make a list of what once were highly prized by our forebears that have slowly changed or died and buried.

1. Organizing baile - Baile, Spanish for dance, is like an informal ball or dance party held in a barangay or a village in the southern part of the Philippines. Before the turn of the 21st century, bachelors and maidens, who came from far and wide, attend this momentous occasion to get a chance to dance with the person they have a liking for. Men go around asking ladies they eyed to dance while a sweet music was played. These days, the term baile is Greek to most, if not all, teenagers.
2. Taking part in religious procession - The centerpiece in a fiesta celebration is usually the patron saint, sometimes it's the Virgin Mary while some places pay homage to Jesus Christ. In the evening of the feast day, more people attend the last night of the novena and participate in a procession. But in recent years, there seems to be missing among the crowd. Most participants are elderly which is true in barangay fiesta. If the old who take the lead in this activity died, who would step into their shoes?
3. Offering foods to the dead or souls - Though this practice doesn't seem to make any sense, people in the past believed that the souls of their loved ones paid them a visit on November 1 that they have to prepare the favorite foods of their decease beloved on the table or altar. Today, there may be a handful who still carry out this tradition which the young consider ridiculous.
4. Playing traditional games - A lot of Filipino traditional games that kids nowadays have not tried to play or have not even heard of. Games like patintero, tumbang preso, luksong baka, and a whole lot more are gradually forgotten as years go by due to the existence of technology that has stolen the time of today's kids.
5. Holding mañanita - At day break, a birthday celebrant is awaken by his friends or family members singing birthday songs outside his house while bringing with them some foods to eat. This is still practiced by some people in these times, but younger generations may not be aware that a tradition like this exists.
6. Speaking the vernacular fluently - I have not stayed in other provinces in the country for too long to be familiar with their respective dialects. But in the Visayas, teenagers can't speak their mother tongue without including Tagalog or English in their sentences. The old Cebuano dialect, for example, can only be heard on radio drama and which is on the verge of extinction.
7. Wearing Sunday dress when attending Mass - Sunday dress could be any type of dress that doesn't make someone look seductive. Women today are fond of wearing tight jeans that reveals their curves which they also sport inside the church. The Catholic church has warned churchgoers no to wear this type of clothing, but nothing seems to stop them.
8. Respecting the old - As time go by, some people don't seem to look up to their elders. They don't even call them manong or manang a word that signifies one's respect to someone of greater age. While most people still use respectful words to address a person, sometime in the future people would call one another by their names be that person is way older than the other.
9. Doing harana - Harana is a traditional way of courtship in which the guy would serenade the girl he loves in a cold silent night. Today, harana is just a word girls want a guy to do for them.
10. Pagmamano -  According to Wikipedia, it is a gesture used in Filipino culture performed as a sign of respect to elders and as a way of accepting a blessing from the elder. Similar to hand-kissing, the person giving the greeting bows towards the offered hand of the elder and presses his or her forehead on the elder's hand. Today, we seldom see it as more and more younger generations are not introduced to this culture anymore.

Aside from the nine Filipino traditions that have evanesced either slowly or completely (there could be more of them I am not able to know and list down here), there are more practices that have metamorphosed partly because of modernization or advancement of technology. Some of them are listed on Filipino Traditions That Have Been Changed By Modernization.