Our first holiday season in Holland was starting to feel a bit grim. Since moving here in August, we always knew that the fall would be the toughest time of year for us. Back home in the Appalachian mountains of the Eastern United States the crisp fall air, brilliant changing leaf colors and smell of spiced rum in the apple press all portend the start of the holiday season. This is the traditional time of year when Americans gather to celebrate with family and friends.
In Holland, fall is a rather dismal time of year as far as the weather goes. Starting in October the jet stream shifts and brings endless waves of clouds and dampness to Northern Europe. There is nothing “crisp” about the daily fog and drizzle and a steady northerly wind cuts sharply through however many layers of clothes we manage to squeeze into. Worst of all, there are no traditional gatherings to look forward to. No Halloween. No Thanksgiving. No deer hunting.
Little did we know the surprises that our adoptive country had up her sleeves for us. It turns out that the Dutch love their holidays and they seem to be able to pull one out of thin air just when you need it the most.
Here in North Holland the holiday season starts with Saint Martin’s day. We began catching wind of this little gem one day in Mid-October in the dog park across the street. There is a really comical older lady with two pugs (Boris and Snitzel) who doesn’t speak much English. Oddly enough, everyone else at the park also complains about her Dutch….they say her thick Amsterdam accent makes it hard to understand her. Remember, Amsterdam is only 15 kilometers away from Haarlem so we’re not talking about remote linguistic relationships or anything. 15 stinking kilometers. I guess it’s like someone from a “blue state” trying to understand someone from a “red state”…never mind, bad example.
Anyhow, this lady took a quick liking to Beth and I. She is a real hoot to talk with even though we can barely understand a word she says. The only reason that we understand anything at all is because she uses her whole body to talk. And she is a “poker”. Every point that she makes comes with a “Ja”. And every “Ja” comes with a poke…and believe me, she always has a lot of points to make. Well one day, she started singing songs to us, in a very childish character voice, to try to get us to understand that Saint Martin’s day was approaching and that we should “prepare” for the festivities.
So I turned to the Internet for a coherent explanation, because she had Beth and I somewhat worried about going into this holiday “unprepared”. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a lot of background information on Saint Martin. Apparently he was a pretty cool dude who lived back in the 10 century. One dark night he found himself almost starving to death with only a loaf of bread and a lantern to his name. Along came a beggar in worse shape than he and good old Martin gave the beggar half his loaf of bread and led him back to a church with his lantern. I think the “church” part is what got him the saint title.
Anyhow, 500 years later this event translated into a holiday in The Netherlands.
The tradition goes something like this: Little kids make plastic and paper lanterns at their schools. On Saint Martin’s evening (November 11) they walk around the neighborhood with candles in their lanterns playing the very appropriate role of “beggars”. As a homeowner, if you want to participate in the evening’s festivities, then you put out your own lantern on the front stoop. Having a lantern at a house gives the kids permission to ring your doorbell. You then open the door and stand there while they sing you some really funky singsong tunes. Naturally, all we could understand was the occasional “Sinta Maartin”, but when they finish singing, everyone claps and you give them a loaf of bread. Of course the modern version of “loaf of bread” is candy….lots of candy. We went through 4 bags.
This was actually a pretty cool holiday. The neighborhood was crawling with kids and families. There were more people out that night than I remember even in the best years back in Greensburg as a beggar kid myself. Laughter and singing filled the streets; and Beth, Sage and I had a great time listening to the same wacky songs over and over and over again late into the evening. The older kids (12) got the additional pleasure of burning their lanterns as they went running through the streets all hopped up on sugar, screaming and throwing molten plastic at each other. Now THAT is good fun.
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The next big holiday of the season is Sinter Claus. It starts almost immediately after Saint Martin’s day. Sometime around November 15th Sinter Claus comes to Holland from Spain (go figure). This being a seafaring nation, naturally he arrives by boat. It’s somewhat reminiscent of George Washington crossing the Delaware when he lands standing on the bow of a long rowboat. The festival starts with a big party at his landing at which time he switches modes of transportation to a horse and starts his journeys throughout The Netherlands. They don’t wind this one down until December 5th.
Sinter Claus himself is a saintly looking old guy, all decked out like the pope in a cheap Wal-Mart Santa Clause outfit. Or maybe it’s more like Santa Clause in a cheap Wal-Mart pope outfit. Either way he carries a long staff and brings with him “Zwarte Piet” - Black Pete. Black Pete is sometimes referred to as a Moorish Elf and sometimes, by those few less politically correct Hollanders, as SinterClaus’s slave.
Sinter Claus does all the “judging” stuff that comes standard with a religiously based holiday. You know, the typical naughty and nice routine. The kids put out their shoes each night and if they were good they find a small present or candy in it in the morning. However, if they were bad, they have much more to worry about than a simple lump of coal in their shoe. No, no, no. Their fate is much darker over here. A little kid that is deemed less than cherubic awakens to Zwarte Piet stuffing them into a burlap sack! He loads the nasty little buggers up and hauls them off to Spain! Fate unknown.
You have to reflect on the historical context of Europe to really understand this tradition. Spain brutally occupied large parts of Holland for several hundred years. Being dragged off by Zwarte Piet was a realistic punishment 500 years ago…and one that was not a pleasant thought for the little kids. Of course, over the past 499 years this has all been watered down and now Zwarte Piet is a smiling, overdone black faced minstrel-show character. Seriously. You should see this guy. As an American it’s actually kind of “cliché” to even talk about him. Just do a google search on “Zwarte Piet” and you’ll see what I mean. It’s an endless source of fascination for us foreigners, but it’s a perfectly natural caricature for them here. Zwarte Piet is always a white person, with black face paint, bright red lipstick, and a wild 60’s style afro wig. Even the children dress this way for Sinter Claus. I still laugh when I see it. It would cause “nights-o-fire” if someone walked down the street painted up like this in Detroit (or Dover for that matter).
Anyhow, from Mid-November until December 4, the kids put out their shoes each night and Zwarte Piet comes by and puts treats in them - because just like everywhere else in the world, Dutch children can do no wrong and are always little angels in the eyes of their parents. Finally, after many days of festivities, on December 5th Sinter Claus shows up and every kid gets a bunch of presents. And when I say, “shows up”, I mean literally “shows up”. I saw no fewer then 5 SinterClaus’s walking around various neighborhoods (with Zwarte Piet’s in tow) going house to house to visit with the children. He never carried a sack of presents so I guess it was just reassurance that the kids wouldn’t be sold into a life as a black slave down in Spain. Each neighborhood must pick a person to be Sinter Claus to do the rounds that year. I can just picture a group of nervous adults hovering around in a circle with an old geezer tapping each out-stretched fist as he chants “auka bauka stona crocka auka bauka boo, in goes Sinter Claus and out goes Y-O-U”.
The next holiday is Christmas. The real Christmas. December 25 and this one is for the adults (09061750). I was beginning to wonder if they celebrated this holiday at all since there were very few decorations up and everything seemed geared toward Sinter Claus. When I finally asked someone about it I uncovered a prime example of Dutch culture and how ambidextrous it can be at times. Ok, we all know that The Netherlands is one of the most liberal places on the planet, right? They smoke pot, they allow prostitution, they support gay marriage, and they generally have a very refreshing “live and let live” attitude toward their (and your own) existence on the planet. Then come the “rules”. These are those odd little codifications that just don’t seem to fit in Holland. Get this - It is ILLEGAL to sell Christmas trees or decorate the streets for Christmas until December 6th. They impose this restriction to protect their own unique cultural celebration of Sinter Claus and not water it down with western commercialization of Santa Claus. Don’t get me wrong, I actually think it’s pretty cool to limit the commercialization. But isn’t it kind of bizarre for such a liberal place to legislate the selling and placement of holiday ornaments? ….and not marijuana ?
Hmmmm……
Anyhow, here we are on December 12 and Christmas in Holland is in full gear now. Today was KerstMarktdag in Haarlem – the opening of the Christmas market. The main square was filled with vendors and echoed with the voices of a choir singing in Saint Bavo’s church, which was electronically amplified around the city. For those few nooks and crannies too far from the square for the music to reach, bands of singing carolers decked out in full period-costumes prodded a festive smile out of even the greenest of grinches. Hot mulled wine complimented with a soft puffy tart sold for a single Euro and helped to take the edge off of the chilly afternoon.
I know that several of you reading this are somewhat grinches yourselves. You’ve been tainted by the commercialism of “forced” gift buying. Or you’ve become hostile toward the secular evolution of December 25. The Christmas of “others” no longer carries a meaning or relevancy for you and you don’t like what it has become in the modern world. It’s a holiday celebration that is best enjoyed in your distant past.
For you, I wish that you could experience what Beth and I did today as we walked through the medieval cobble stoned alleys of Haarlem. The streets sang with laughter and the pubs and café’s overflowed with merry makers. The sights and sounds of Christmas were everywhere. And I hope that if you had experienced what we did today that it would have made Christmas yours again. That it would have planted a smile squarely on your face and put fluttering wings to your soul – just like you remembered as a kid.
Cheers and Merry Christmas!
The next two postings are also pictures of Sinter Clause (Zwarte Piet) and Christmas in Haarlem.
