The statue of the Santo Niño is said to have been brought to Cebu in 1521 by Spanish sailors under the command of Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan. It was reportedly presented as a gift to Queen Juana on the occasion of her baptism into the Christian religion, on April 24, 1521, together with her husband Rajah Humabon, and some 800 of their tribesmen.
But the Spaniards did not last long in the island. After just a few days here, Magellan was felled by a native warrior's bolo in a face-to-face battle at Mactan; and what few remained of his men quickly fled back to Spain. There is no account of the Santo Niño after that.
There's a folktale, however, that the Zubu (Cebu) natives - particularly those who did not embrace the new religion the Spaniards brought - wanted to destroy the image, at first. But their several attempts failed. In the end, they were convinced that the statue had powers and venerated it as their new icon of worship.
It is told that Queen Juana herself would carry the Santo Niño around the village, invoking upon the power of the Child God to deliver the community from pestilence. She would go around in fluid steps and gesticulations that mimicked the movement of the water currents of the river. The practice, the legend claims, is the precursor of today's Santo Niño procession and the sinulog prayer-dance.
But on record, the very first Santo Niño procession in Cebu took place in the summer of 1565, forty-four years after Magellan's foiled attempt to claim the island for Spain. It was on the occasion of the statue's transfer from a house in Sawang (San Nicolas) to a chapel made of wood and nipa in what is now the Basilica Minore del Santo Niño compound.
Leading the procession was Miguel Lopez de Legazpi and his chaplain, Fr. Andres de Urdaneta. Other Spanish officials of the newly founded El Ciudad del Santisimo Nombre de Jesus were also in attendance, together with the natives who had come to worship the statue.
As the procession was moving on land, the Spanish galleons nearby at sea nearby moved slowly along with it. Canon shots were sounded off as a sign of salute to the Holy Child. Today's fluvial procession in the morning of Saturday is probably a carry-over from the galleon days, while the fireworks display at night is reminiscent of those saluting canon blasts.
That procession was commemorated in the following year with a feast in honor of the Santo Niño. For the next century and a half, the feast was celebrated on April 28. But Pope Innocent VIII, in 1721, moved the celebration to the second Sunday of Epiphany, which is the third Sunday of January. This was purposely to clear the summer season of Lent of any other religious observances.
The change of feast dates has not in any way dampened the intensity of the revelry or lessened the religious character of the Santo Niño fiesta. The celebration has, instead, consistently grown in magnitude year after year. Most of the original fiesta events, like the procession and the sinulog dancing, have remained and are making it more grandiose.