Tag Archives: party game

Pabitin at Birthday Parties

“A pabitin is a grid of bamboo wrapped in cellophane.  We have those at birthday parties and what you do is you essentially buy a bunch of small toys like those packs of sushi erasers or something.  Small dollar action figurines or crayons or candy… you tie or tape all of it onto the grid so it’s all hanging off.  Then you tie a large string to the grid and put it up basically like a piñata with one person handling the end of the rope.  You gather all of the kids under the pabitin and the person holding the rope can decide how far down he’ll let the grid fall to the children, and they have to jump up to try to grab the goodies.  Half of the fun is setting up how the toys and gifts are scattered and preparing the children.  I also like watching the children’s creativity get teased as they jump for the toys.  Bamboo is used for everything, like building houses… I don’t really know how we ended up making our native products out of bamboo, heheh.  So the material in itself already has cultural roots.   If in Mexican parties you always have a pinata, it’s the same idea for us Filipinos, where our children’s parties are characterized by pabitin.”

Background: The informant is a 20-year old college student who has witnessed several Filipino birthday parties in the past.  She has only been a witness, however, as she uses a wheelchair for transportation.

Context: This piece was told to me during a luncheon after our Sunday services.

This tradition puts a more competitive and high-energy spin on the normal act of providing gift bags to party guests.  The kids have fun as the adults tease them out of getting the goodies from the grid, and there are often bigger prizes than others that the children are already eyeing before they get to compete.  The grids can also be made of bamboo, which is light and flexible, and also one of our cultural agricultural products.

Danish Christmas Almond Game

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: La Habra, CA
Performance Date: 4/29/2020
Primary Language: English

A Christmas Eve tradition.

Text:

Informant: As far as traditions like that. My aunts are Danish, and we do this thing on Christmas eve where every person gets this like lemon dessert. Everyone in the house gets one, and only one has an almond underneath. I’ve never known what it’s supposed to represent or whatever, but the person with the almond has good luck for the rest of the year. Also, the person who gets the almond has to host the party for next year. We do that on Christmas Eve.

Context:

I asked a group of friends if they had any holiday traditions. This was one of their replies.

Thoughts:

This is very similar to a game my neighborhood plays every year where a bundt cake is cut, and whoever has a plastic baby Jesus in their slice has to host the Christmas party the next year.

Picture Telephone

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Ridgecrest, CA
Performance Date: 4/19/12
Primary Language: English
Language: German

Picture telephone is a variation of the classic game telephone usually played with 5-10 players. All of the players are given a pen or pencil and a stack of post its stapled together with 1 page fore each player. Players sit in a circle and in secret everyone writes down a word or phrase on the first sheet of the stack. After 30 seconds, everyone passes their book to the right. At which point players must try and draw the word or phrase from the first page. Then after 30 seconds, they must pass the book to the right. The third player then must try and guess what the phrase that describes the drawing without looking at the original phrase, and writes it on the third page. Play continues until each book has made it all around the circle, with each player alternating drawing what is described or describing what was drawn on the previous page without looking at any other pages. By the time each book has made it all the way around the message has usually been greatly distorted, and all the books are shared.

 

This game was introduced to my informant at a high school get together. The game is somewhat complicated to explain, but easy to play, making it a game that is good to play repeatedly with friends, and strengthening bonds within the group. It also serves to exclude people who are not normally part of the group as they have to have the rules explained to them, often a couple of times before they understand how to play. This game is similar to telephone as one of the best aspects of game is comparing the resulting message with the original to see how the chain of communication distorted it.

 

Black Magic

Nationality: Japanese American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Anaheim, CA
Performance Date: March 5, 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: Japanese

In order to do Black Magic, you are going to need two performers.  Performer #1 is the asker while performer #2 is the guesser.  Performer #1 tells the audience the he/she has a telepathic connection with #2 and tells #2 to leave the room.  #1 then tells an audience member to pick any object in the room.  #1 will then say that he/she be able to transmit what the object is to #2.  After the audience member picks (we will say a chair for this example), #2 returns to the room.  #1 will then start asking questions such as, “Is it this shirt? Is it her hair?” #2 will then respond with “no” until finally #1 will ask “Is it the chair?” and #2 will say, “Yes.”  At this point the audience member will be shocked that #2 was able to figure out the object.  The trick here occurs when #1 is asking the questions about what the object is; the object that is named right before the chosen object is always predominantly black in color.  For example, #1 will ask, “Is it her shirt?” and points at somebody’s black shirt.  The color black is the cue that the object in the next question is the chosen object.  If people ask for hints as to how the trick work, just tell them to think about the name of the game.

My informant told me about this game during a dinner party.  On this occasion, my informant wanted to play this game but unfortunately for her, nobody else in the group knew about it.  She decided to tell me about it so that I could be performer number two. We both performed the game a couple times with the other people in the dinner party, and everyone was constantly throwing guesses for how I was able to correctly ascertaining the chosen object.

I asked my informant where she got this fun party game from and she said she had learned about it from her cousin at a family reunion party.  Her cousin had wanted to convince her younger relatives that she was psychic and she used this to do so.  Hearing this, I speculate that this game is probably derived from fake psychics who wanted to prove their ability.  By practicing this activity, the “psychic” would then be able to convince customers that there “powers” are real.