When Sinterklaas Came to Town

Did you know that the Dutch traditionally celebrate Christmas with gifts and parties more on December 5th than on the 25th? It's St. Nicholas Day and it's a pretty big deal!

It starts with a Saturday in mid to late November when Sinterklaas arrives on his steamboat from Spain with his helper Zwarte Piet who is a white person covered with black paint with big red lips. This is because Zwarte Piet goes down chimneys which makes him all black from the soot. Not because he is a remnant of colonial history revealing a latent racism in one of the most progressive countries in the world...right?

Well anyway, kids dress up as Sinterklaas (who is a Christian cardinal and rides a white horse) and as Zwarte Piet (black peter). Interestingly, there is only one Sinterklaas but black pete seems to have proliferated - there are always many black petes assigned to one Sinterklaas.

As I understand it Sinterklaas comes to the Netherlands once a year from Spain and gives gifts. However if you have been naughty he will put you in a sac and take you back to Spain to work in a factory.

I celebrated Sinterklass' arrival by meeting up with some friends at the harbour and seeing him come in and watching the little concert that accompanied it. There were lots of families there with their kids. I think the best part was that after the program of dancing and music on the stage was over I turned around and within like 5 minutes the crowd had just totally peacefully disapated without traffic jams. I was like, wow these Dutch people really know how to disperse.

The harbour festivities - it was so windy that day that biking along the beach to get there felt like fighting against a treadmill

See all the black peter's dancing?

Met up with friends there

Sinterklaas had a little concert where someone who looked like Justin Beiber led a bunch of Zwarte Piet dancers.
My friend pointed out that the Zwarte Piets were clearly white underneath because of the quality of their dancing

My friend took this picture. She was looking for people joining the movement of not painting themselves black to be peter but rather multicoloured or at least just not black all over but black with soot like the kid below.

She also took this picture. Good photographer huh?

Some of the traditions that go along with Sinterklaas is that Zwarte Piet hands out these little brown cookies to everyone and kids get chocolate letters (a chocolate letter of the first letter in their name). When I had a couple of my friends over I got us all letters for our names to celebrate: 

This is also the night that we painted our own canvases...with our fingers! It's related because of the chocolate and ...it's so dutch! 

Hard at work

The genuis

Cameron's on the left-he wanted his to be made all of triangles
Mine is in the middle- its a windmill with a canal and tulips
Ashley's is on the right: its autumn. With a cat! 

I like these, my Mormon single friends, a whole lot

So yeah. I myself celebrated St. Nicholas Day by planning to eat my Zwarte Piet fancy chocolate and then waiting because I wasn't hungry (See! I do have SOME self control!) 

Look at how tired I am!

I also spent the day with Cameron going to awesome museums and eating good food as it was his last day in the Netherlands before moving back to the states. But maybe more on that later as that's not the point of this post.

The point of this post is: Sinterklaas. It's a thing.