Pandemic makes traditional ‘sugarcane feast’ low-key affair

MELAKA: The Melaka Portuguese community observed The Feast of the Assumption, also known as the “sugarcane feast”, minus the usual large crowds, due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Local historian Joseph Sta Maria said the pandemic has forced the celebration to be a low-key affair with no church service at the Assumption Church along Praya Lane in Bandar Hilir, yesterday.

“The annual procession has been deferred since 2020,” he said. However, Sta Maria said the community continued to place sugarcane around the church’s compound.

“Assumption Feast Day is celebrated by Roman Catholics all over the country. Uniquely at Praya Lane, this celebration is observed by the Melaka Portuguese community each year by decorating the church compound with sugarcane, the only Catholic Church in the country to do so,” he said.

He said the sugarcane is normally blessed by the priest and would be distributed to the congregation after the church service in previous years. He added that the church was built in the 1800s, according to a historian, the late Father Manuel Joaquim Pintado.

Based on one account which dates back to the Dutch occupation of Melaka in 1641, the Portuguese community, being Catholics, had to carry out their religious obligations in secret during the era.

“Banda Hilir was then densely populated by the Portuguese community and sugarcane was in abundance there,” he said. The community used to to hide in these plantations to carry out their prayers,” said Sta Maria.

When the church was built to commemorate the “protection” of their ancestors hiding in the sugarcane plantation to practise their faith, the community celebrates the Feast of the Assumption by placing the sugarcane at the church compound.