ALIAGA, NUEVA ECIJA – The townsfolk of Aliaga, Nueva Ecija celebrate the Feast of St. John the Baptist. But unlike their counterparts in San Juan City who merrily douse each other with water, residents in this sleepy town do something entirely different – they cover themselves in mud and put on a costume of foliage, particularly banana leaves.

Devotees call this “pagsa-San Juan” (doing a St. John) but is more popularly called “Taong Putik” (muddied man). This act of putting on mud and leaves is apropos to the character of St. John the Baptist, who in literature and in paintings is shown to have worn animal skin.

Participants in the taong putik activity start their rituals as early as 4 a.m. when they go to a creek or a rice paddy to start putting packing mud on their skins. They later put on their hand-made costumes of long dried banana leaves tied together at one end, then placed at the top of their heads.

Devotees then walk around asking for money that they would later use to buy candles. These participants will walk towards the church together, their costumes collectively looking like a walking mass of dried vegetation. The candles are then lit before or during a mass.

One particular story that circulated among the townsfolk was that the Taong Putik started after an incident during the occupation of the Philippines by the Japanese when a group of Japanese soldiers rounded up the town’s men to be killed via firing squad.

But before being shot, a sudden heavy downpour occurred and the Japanese soldiers – most of whom are Shinto and believe in the sun deity named Amaterasu – considered it a divine intervention. The village men were later freed. Meanwhile, the survivors considered it as more of a second chance at life.

While the veracity of this story has not been established, it is considered to be the trigger for the town to celebrate the feast of St. John the Baptist.