The Road Leeds To Rotterdam

 

 

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I am a huge fan of Christmas, hence the excitement so early on in the month - Sinterklaas has fuelled this excitement (read more about that below), as well as Rotterdam becoming snow city.

Advent Calendar
How lovely! Mildred sent me a Christmas countdown through the post just before Dutch December began. She is such a thoughtful bean.

 

 

Sinterklaas!
Joepie! Het is tijd voor en Nederlands feest!

Sinterklaas is a Dutch Christmas celebration that takes place on the 5th of December. The story goes that 'Sinterklaas' (St. Nicholas), with the help of his assistant 'Zwart Piet' (Black Pete), puts little presents in well-behaved children's empty shoes that have been left by the fireplace on the night of the 5th. Badly behaved children do not receive these little gifts, they are instead put in a bag by Zwart Piet and taken to Spain.

 

So, on the night of Sinterklaas, children receive gifts, and families meet for a 'gezellig' get together, and mass consumption of 'pepernoten', chocolate letters of the alphabet, and marzipan delights. Along with these shenanigans, poems are written and read (Sinterklaasgedicht). These poems are anonymous, usually written about a specific individual; rhyming lines about that person's good, as well as bad, attributes.

 

 

 

The whole thing seems like a pleasant Christmas time ritual, kind of. Zwart Piet is a certainly a questionable character, and I personally think its a bit unfair that badly behaved children get sent to sunny Spain - I have a brother and numerous close friends living in Spain, surely if I was well-behaved I should be sent there? My Dutch friends explained to me that Zwart Piet is a white person typically painted black due to the coal dust that he gets covered in when going down the chimney delivering presents into the children's empty shoes/putting them in a bag.

However, a lot of people see it differently. Click The Guardian link below: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/dec/05/black-pete-race-netherlands