Talk to the Hand Cuz the Sint Ain't Listnen'
While in other countries children eagerly count down the days until Christmas with chocolate calendars and endless enthusiasm for the question “how many days now?” Dutch children get to start the waiting game early with the celebration of Sinterklaas.
Sinterklaas, an elderly gentleman dressed in quite serious looking red and gold clothing comes complete with white hair and a long beard but it is there that all the similarities with Father Christmas/Santa Claus and Sinterklaas end. Take the following:
|
Father Christmas/Santa Claus |
Sinterklaas |
|
chubby |
skinny |
|
utilises reindeer |
utilises a white horse |
|
lives in the North Pole |
lives in Spain |
|
mode of transport: sleigh |
mode of transport: steam boat |
|
assistants: elves |
assistants: zwarte piet (black men with red lips and colourful clothing) |
Sinterklaas will arrive in the Netherlands on Saturday. In the weeks between his arrival and his departure on December 5th, he will fill shoes that have been left out by children, with goodies. He will also package up any naughty children in a sack and take them back to Spain with him when he goes. Thank goodness!
The arrival of Sinterklaas is never a smooth one. There is always some tragedy that happens. As bad luck goes, Sinterklaas clearly has broken a lot of mirrors. The annual suspenseful journey even has its own tv show in the form of the Sinterklaas Journaal – a daily (from three days before his arrival until December 4th) news segment for children to follow what is happening with Sinterklaas and get pulled into the storyline.
Yesterday was the first edition of the Sinterklaas Journaal and here is what happened:
- The news reader tried to make contact with the steamboat but the connection was not good.
- A very weird mayor announced that Sinterklaas was not going to land in Dordrecht but in her town of Averecht instead, even though Sinterklaas doesn’t know this and that town has no children.
- The news reader tried again to make contact with the steamboat but we only saw an empty wheelhouse.
- A reminder was given that the book of Sinterklaas that contains all the names of the children and if they have been good or bad is getting a bit old, so Sinterklaas is making a new one. It seems that Sinterklaas has been spending some time on the internet so to ensure you don’t get left out of the book by mistake you can check your name online.
- An aerial shot of the steamboat showed it to be all dark and empty looking. Just where is Sinterklaas and all his Zwarte Pieten?
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It’s not sounding good for Sinterklaas. Could it have finally happened? Zombie out break on the steam boat?
I think Sinterklaas got his hands on one of the early releases of Skyrim and is below decks with the xbox on. But zombie outbreak is of course a very viable option as well.
Hoi Heather,
And, have you succeeded in writing Dutch poems? That, of course, is one of the great traditions that comes with Sinterklaas and which, I find, one of the important distinctions with Santa Claus. It’s not about the gifts (or that used to be the case, now it depends on the family, I suppose) but about the creative wrapping that tells something about the receiver of the gifts, and the accompanying poem.
Did you celebrate Sinterklaas in any way?
Hoi Karin-Marijke!
Can you believe I have never written a Dutch poem. We were talking about it this year because I made a post about it (with an English Sinterklaas poem) on another blog. I’ve heard a bit about this creative wrapping but still haven’t quite got my head around it. Have you got some examples? We didn’t celebrate. Things have been so busy we haven’t really had time for anything. 2012 will be here before I have even realised that we December came and went.
Hi heather,
Shame on you for the poem issue :-) As to the creative wrapping, say you like tennis then I could make a tennis racket from carton and paper and inside put the present, which doesn’t have to be related to tennis at all. Particular wrappings I remember: 1 mt long sigar for a teacher, a carton jewellery box for my mother, a perfect copy of a pack of sigarettes. When finished I discovered I had forgotten to put the present inside :-)
I know! I know! Okay, great that makes a lot more sense. Maybe I need to do my own surprise wrapping next year! :)