Before the advent of video games, smartphones, and tablets, boys and girls used to play outside with their friends. Children didn’t need fancy and expensive gadgets to have fun. For most games, all you needed were a few friends – if you did need some equipment, it was mostly things found outside, around the house, or were relatively inexpensive (if you needed to purchase them).
From the basics, like habulan, patintero, or tumbang preso, there’s a lot of traditional games Filipino children from around the country play. Nowadays, it seems like only the titos and titas are the only ones who remember these classic games and how to play them.
This is a series I’d like to call Games Children No Longer Play. Join me in this trip down memory lane, where we talk about the different Filipino games that are near and dear to my heart, with rules on how we used to play them in our part of the Philippines.
I have also used Google AI to generate the pictures for these articles.
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One of the boys’ favorite games is Holen.
Holen is the vernacular for marbles – but mind you, not the marble used to make floors and countertops. It is a small spherical ball made of glass with different designs. The most common is the one with a ribbon-like design inside. There are also holen with special designs, and these are the ones that are usually used for pamato.
Pamatos are the precious ones. They are not to be traded. They are lucky holens that are used to win games.
There are different ways to play a game of holen, but the most common one is the one where you roll two or three holens on the ground and you hit the holen that your opponent chooses with your pamato.
It sounds simple, but holen is quite a challenging game.
Before the game starts, the players first decide on a base and the distance between the base and the target area. Two perpendicular lines are drawn to mark the distance. Then they make a crater with a depth half the size of the holen two to four inches over the line opposite the base. Then the game begins.
Who starts first is determined by rolling a holen. The owner of the holen that is rolled nearest to the line opposite the base gets to start first.
The game starts with one player trying to roll a holen into the crater. Each player is given two or three tries, depending on what’s agreed upon by both parties. If the player fails to roll the holen into the crater, his opponent will choose a holen that he will hit. Usually the opponent chooses one that is nearest to the crater. Then he puts the extra holen in the crater. A player wins if he hits the holen his opponent has chosen. He loses if he hits the holen inside the crater. It’s a draw if he hits neither and his opponent gets his turn to play.
The winner of the game will get the holens of his opponent, then the game restarts again.
Sounds complicated? It’s not. It is a very simple game. You roll a holen, try to get it into a crater, if you fail, try to hit one. Repeat until your mothers call you home.
Holen is fun game to play. It is so fun that boys would often get scolded (or spanked) by their mothers for forgetting to do their chores because of it.
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For the bona fide titos and titas out there – did you play this game in your youth? Maybe it was called something else, with a whole set of different rules? Let us know in the comments below, and let’s talk about it!