MANILA, Philippines ? Not a few Filipinos have wondered if the fiesta is appropriate for the Philippines, given the way people, especially the poor, feel obligated to spend. As the term itself implies, a fiesta is a feast, when people binge on luxury foods like lechon and on alcoholic drinks, after which they return to a life of ?famine,? an exaggeration of course, but a life where the usual meal is rice (or these days, instant noodles) and dried fish.

The fiesta, which revolves around a patron saint?s feast day, has been blamed on Spanish colonialism and Catholicism. But if you look really hard, you?ll find that its roots date back to pre-colonial times.

All cultures have occasions for communal feasting, done in the name of the spirits. Many of the rituals revolve around food production, appealing for a good harvest, followed by another feasting for thanks when there?s a bounty. Feasts are also used in attempts to placate the spirits in times of calamities and epidemics, or to celebrate a victory in battle. Add to that the feasting around life?s many milestones, mainly marriage and death, and you have a year marked with constant feasts.

The rituals bring communities together, and are also occasions for displaying and building up one?s social rank, with expectations that the richer members of a community would contribute more food and drink.

We still have vestiges of these pre-colonial rituals, an example being the cañao in the Cordillera. Even among Christian communities, many of the agricultural, fishing and healing rituals still exist.

The Catholic fiesta provided one grand annual focus for community celebrations, ostensibly around religion and the veneration of the patron saint. In reality, it takes on many more secular functions, foremost of which is allowing a kind of communal, officially sanctioned ?R&R? (rest and recreation) period. It is not accidental that so many of the fiestas are timed around May. The profusion of flowers (thus, flores de Mayo) adds to the color, but more importantly, May is the tail-end of the summer, when there is a lag in agricultural activities. Perhaps, too, in the past, May was a time to pray for the rains to come early, so planting could start.

The fiesta keeps many non-religious functions. I sometimes even suspect that fiestas function to challenge Catholic austerity and solemnity, what with the excesses in eating, singing and dancing. Some early Spanish chronicles had the friars complaining about the not-so-religious behavior of their parishioners during the fiesta.

Today, the fiestas have become more ?pagan,? sometimes even bordering on the sacrilegious. I?m thinking of all the fiestas where the town?s gay population are mobilized to launch a santacruzan in drag?the gay folk coming out dressed as women, as characters from religious history (such as the Reyna Elena) and others created on the spot (the Egyptian Queen Nefertiti is a popular one, because of the way the name puns on gender).

For fiestas that aren?t held in May, there will still be beauty contests, again involving real as well as not-so-real women. These santacruzan and beauty contests, secular as they may be, have become major fund-raising activities, with the town?s residents buying votes for their favorite ?queen.? In other cases, the town?s residents solicit funds from the wealthy for prizes. Not surprisingly, there are now professional santacruzan gays who go around the country competing in different santacruzans and vying for the cash prizes.

I?m actually ambivalent then about the ?feast and famine? argument about fiestas. To prove that, we would need to do studies to look at the way cash flows around these events.

No doubt, there is a spurt in economic activity in the town because everyone, in principle, is obligated to participate, preparing food and opening their homes to anyone who wants to drop by. Vendors get a day of brisk business as well, as they sell food, toys and souvenirs.

I suspect people do go into debt, not just to get food for the guests but also to participate in events, including splurging for daughters (or a gay son) who participate in the fiesta?s santacruzan, or beauty contest.

I worry about how the fiesta has been turned into a religious obligation, with people telling me that not celebrating the fiesta might bring about gaba, the wrath of God, or of the patron saint, and bring misfortune to the community?and this can range from poor agricultural harvests to epidemics. In effect, the fiesta deteriorates into a form of spiritual blackmail.

The fiesta also tends to reinforce the sense of ?pakitang-tao,? of keeping up appearances and letting people believe that our hometown is richer than it actually is. This kind of thinking spills over and distorts our priorities, which is why we see minimum-wage earners going into debt and splurging thousands of pesos to celebrate birthdays and debuts. ?It?s a Catholic tradition,? I?ve been told by families trying to justify the expenditures.

Indeed, as a saying goes, as Catholic as a fiesta.