“Christmas” Comes Early
Now, I have never been one for fanfare, and one of my favourite parts about living in Holland, with its Calvinist approach to celebrity and excess, is that fanfare only happens a few times a year here: Queen’s Day, New Year’s, and Sinterklaas.
The first two you’ve heard about. The third, probably not so much. Sinterklaas is celebrated on the 5th of December, the eve of the name day of St. Nikolaas, the patron saint of children. An old man with a white beard dressed in a red suit rides his white horse over the rooftops with a sack full of presents and, with his helpers, the Zwarte Pieten, distributes presents to kids. Sound familiar? That’s because Sinterklaas was the inspiration for Santa Claus, which the Dutch also have, but with much less fanfare. Christmas is very low on the scale of celebration here; it’s more about getting together with the family for a good, long meal (which is just fine by me), and not so much about presents. In short, Sinterklaas usurps Christmas, and keeps it about the kids.
So why am I writing about this now, in the middle of November? Because yesterday, Sinterklaas arrived in Holland on a steamboat.
You see, Sinterklaas lives in Spain (smart man), and every year, he gets to Holland about three weeks before the 5th of December. During those three weeks, kids put a shoe by the fireplace (or, these days, the radiator) each night, usually with a carrot for Sint’s horse, and in the morning they’ll find a small treat – a candy, chocolate, or a mandarin. It’s a sort of “Yes, I’ve really been good all year” plea. And yes, this goes on every night for three weeks. On the night of the 5th, Sinterklaas stops by each house with a big book that has the names of all the children in it. He looks you up, sees whether you’ve been good or bad, and then, well, you know the rest.
Now, I’m not going to get into the controversy of Sinterklaas here. That’s a whole other blog entry, and an argument never won. Suffice it to say that it’s an argument never won because both sides (the Dutch, and the non-Dutch) approach it from their own context. (David Sedaris captures this brilliantly in his monologue “Six to Eight Black Men”.)
Say what you might about Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten, but Sinterklaas’ arrival is spectacular. He really does enter Amsterdam on a steamboat, on the Amstel River.
The boat is packed with Zwarte Pieten,
and the Amstel is packed with hangers-on, in boats, and lining the shore 10 deep.
Kids dress up, mostly as Zwarte Piet, and a few as Sinterklaas.
While they wait for his boat to appear, they sing Sinterklaas songs. Zwarte Pieten rollerskate along the route, directing and controlling the crowds. And once Sinterklaas’ boat has passed by, huge crowds leave their perches and follow him,
both on the water and along the river and canals, until he reaches his end point, where he disembarks the boat, meets the mayor, mounts his white horse and rides away. It is the stuff of magic,
even for an adult: the excitement of the kids, the execution and the theatre of it, and the permission to imagine that this is all true, if only for a few weeks of the year.
