December 5th is Holland’s Sinterklaas holiday. It’s a wonderfully thoughtful and creative occasion, but this Dutch holiday also has a controversial ‘dark-side’.
December 5th is Holland’s Sinterklaas holiday. It’s a wonderfully thoughtful and creative occasion, but this Dutch holiday also has a controversial ‘dark-side’.
Sinterklaas, a.k.a. Saint (Sint) Nicholas, lives in Spain, and around November 20th he sails for Holland%%on a steamboat with his white horse, Schimmel (Mold… yes, mold), and his helpers, Moors named Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Upon Sint’s arrival in Holland, Dutch kids put their shoes in front of the fireplace, and Zwarte Piet slides down the chimney to put candy (nowadays, cash, computer games, cosmetics…) in them.
Sinterklaas is also the time for exchanging ‘surprises,’ which are handmade presents, like, say, a papier-mâché Buddha, with a store-bought present inside. With each ‘surprise’ comes a rhyming poem (doggerel), in which the ‘poet’ gently teases the person receiving the ‘surprise’ about their amusing personal habits or recent happenings.
December 5th Sinterklaas is a ‘typically Dutch’ festivity (only Holland celebrating it thus) that really does brings out the best in the native character: Dutch folk not only write poems, they also spend weeks, sometimes months, devising, designing and building the ‘surprises’, working secretly, wielding hammers, saws, paint brushes… to create something truly special for their friend or loved one. Yet, for all its national brilliance, Sinterklaas has got problems.
First, Sinterklaas suffers from the general coarsening effect of Holland’s new US-style capitalism: Calvin Klein is the only Calvin that matters here now, and, consequently, strictly commercial Santa Claus/Christmas (December 25) is gaining on traditional Sinterklaas. While Santa Claus capitalism demands many presents bought for many people (which mega-chain-store corporations love), old Sinterklaas says make just one ‘surprise’ present for just one person, and, remember, Sint says, the gift’s value is as much the love, thought, invention invested in making the ‘surprise’ as the cash value of the present inside! To which that fat pimp Santa Claus just laughs his greedy corporate laugh and replies, “Beautiful sentiments, Sint baby, but get the hell outta my way before I run you over with my Land Rover!”
The second problem is Zwatre Piet (Black Pete). Piet’s defenders say he’s historical, a Moor, just good fun, blah, blah… but that doesn’t alter the fact that he’s a pretty distasteful caricature of a black person by black-make-up wearing white people, or that understandably this bothers Dutch people of color whose ancestors suffered under cruelly exploitative Dutch colonialism.
But, despite this, Zwarte Piet is all right. In fact, he’s more than that: Piet’s MTV cool, like a baggy pants hip-hopper. Piet’s got style, wears funky clothes and has a refreshingly irreverent kick-Sint-in-the-ass-if-he-turns-his-back attitude. Moreover, Piet generously provides a valuable public service: Dutch people love dressing up as Piet, not to ridicule blacks, but to let loose, to escape their white conservative coffins and live a hot-blooded life for a while.
No, Piet’s cool. It’s Sint you’ve got to watch out for! Big, stiff, leering, religious fundamentalist Sint is the real fool. Sure, Piet scares little Dutch kids, threatening to take them back to Spain in his sack, but knowing what we now know about pedophile priests in America, Ireland, Mexico…, even the words ‘Sint’ and ‘sack’ in the same sentence sounds perverted. If Holland’s boys and girls must go to Spain in a sack, they’d better make darn sure it’s Piet’s. And if Sint exposes his sack, run kids run!
Sinterklaas, a.k.a. Saint (Sint) Nicholas, lives in Spain, and around November 20th he sails for Holland on a steamboat with his white horse, Schimmel (Mold… yes, mold), and his helpers, Moors named Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Upon Sint’s arrival in Holland, Dutch kids put their shoes in front of the fireplace, and Zwarte Piet slides down the chimney to put candy (nowadays, cash, computer games, cosmetics…) in them.
Surprises
Sinterklaas is also the time for exchanging ‘surprises,’ which are handmade presents, like, say, a papier-mâché Buddha, with a store-bought present inside. With each ‘surprise’ comes a rhyming poem (doggerel), in which the ‘poet’ gently teases the person receiving the ‘surprise’ about their amusing personal habits or recent happenings.
Writing poems
December 5th Sinterklaas is a ‘typically Dutch’ festivity (only Holland celebrating it thus) that really does brings out the best in the native character: Dutch folk not only write poems, they also spend weeks, sometimes months, devising, designing and building the ‘surprises’, working secretly, wielding hammers, saws, paint brushes… to create something truly special for their friend or loved one. Yet, for all its national brilliance, Sinterklaas has got problems.
The gift’s value is as much as the love
First, Sinterklaas suffers from the general coarsening effect of Holland’s new US-style capitalism: Calvin Klein is the only Calvin that matters here now, and, consequently, strictly commercial Santa Claus/Christmas (December 25) is gaining on traditional Sinterklaas. While Santa Claus capitalism demands many presents bought for many people (which mega-chain-store corporations love), old Sinterklaas says make just one ‘surprise’ present for just one person, and, remember, Sint says, the gift’s value is as much the love, thought, invention invested in making the ‘surprise’ as the cash value of the present inside! To which that fat pimp Santa Claus just laughs his greedy corporate laugh and replies, “Beautiful sentiments, Sint baby, but get the hell outta my way before I run you over with my Land Rover!”
Black Pete
The second problem is Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). Piet’s defenders say he’s historical, a Moor, just good fun, blah, blah… but that doesn’t alter the fact that he’s a pretty distasteful caricature of a black person by black-make-up wearing white people, or that understandably this bothers Dutch people of color whose ancestors suffered under cruelly exploitative Dutch colonialism.
Piet’s got style
But, despite this, Zwarte Piet is all right. In fact, he’s more than that: Piet’s MTV cool, like a baggy pants hip-hopper. Piet’s got style, wears funky clothes and has a refreshingly irreverent kick-Sint-in-the-ass-if-he-turns-his-back attitude. Moreover, Piet generously provides a valuable public service: Dutch people love dressing up as Piet, not to ridicule blacks, but to let loose, to escape their white conservative coffins and live a hot-blooded life for a while.
In the sack
No, Piet’s cool. It’s Sint you’ve got to watch out for! Big, stiff, leering, religious fundamentalist Sint is the real fool. Sure, Piet scares little Dutch kids, threatening to take them back to Spain in his sack, but knowing what we now know about pedophile priests in America, Ireland, Mexico…, even the words ‘Sint’ and ‘sack’ in the same sentence sounds perverted. If Holland’s boys and girls must go to Spain in a sack, they’d better make darn sure it’s Piet’s. And if Sint exposes his sack, run kids run!
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