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Sint Gone, Santa Arrives
St. Nicholas has left the building and has been replaced with colorful Christmas trees, garlands and sparkling lights everywhere. It’s not done in Holland to decorate a Christmas tree before Sinterklaas is gone, so I’ve been a good Dutch girl and waited for him to get back on his big boat and sail off to warmer climes and sunnier places. It’s where I would go.
Must admit I’m curious how many St Nicholas feasts we’ll be celebrating the way we have been up until now.
Black Pete is subject to some racial controversy and in all honesty, I do agree with that. The holiday as we celebrate it now in a multicultural society is perhaps outdated and the moment it hurts anyone’s feelings we should find a new way to celebrate it. It shouldn’t be hard to transform Pete into a guy who really looks like he’s soot covered, fresh from the chimney, right?
I mean, seriously, people… as far as I know a descent down a chimney doesn’t give you bright red lips and an afro hairdo. From the other side I found the linkage to right-wing Dutch politicians and the attack on the Dutch pretty offensive as well. I really don’t think it contributes to a meaningful discussion at all and it’s clear we need to open that discussion.
Having said all that, we did have a blast at J-man’s school! Here are a few shots.
The fun started a two weeks before D-day. The kids found a letter saying that Pete fell in love with one of the teachers, Miss J. There were two teachers whose name starts with a J, so of course they were dying to know who it was.
Then there was the proposal. It turned out to be Jayden’s teacher, Miss Janneke.
The teachers got the kids all riled up on the morning of the 5th—didn’t take an awful lot to do that—and then they came outside. Man, it was cold out there. My hands were freezing inspite of the thick gloves I was wearing.
There he was, the man himself. In a convertible! Brave, really brave.
And then came the moment Miss Janneke walked outside. Wearing a wedding gown! You should have heard the kids scream, it was so cute. They got hitched.
Thought I doubt she thought it cute standing there perishing with cold in a thin wedding gown. The woman is a size minus zero.
Those kids loved it. Blissfully unaware of any kind of controversy and the color of each other’s skin, they celebrated a holiday meant solely for them and had fun doing it. Kids and teachers were jumping up and down trying to stay warm though.
But there was a whole lot of lovin’ going on stage. That’s for sure.
A whole lot of lovin’ indeed. So the kids in our neighborhood had their first real foray into relationship-territory this year.
What can I say? We got to let love rule…
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Interesting difference in cultures. Characters with faces painted black would be frowned upon over here.
@Karohemd:
Hence the controversy.
The first time my husband (then boyfriend) saw Black Pete ( Zwarte Piet) he did say WTF. I had to explain to him why Zwarte Piet was painted black. In my eyes it wasn’t meant racial. But if you look through a foreigners eye,you must agree it does come across racial. Most people who did not grow up with this tradition won’t understand, and yes I do agree with you Kay it’s time for a change. Before I met my husband I never thought about it, till he pointed it out to me.
@ Arrisje:
Ir’s a children’s holiday. It was never meant as a racist thing, I agree. People here don’t even think about it like that. If you start looking at the tradition througha foreigners eyes, you’re right, you see where they’re coming from. Hiding behind tradition isn’t something I like to do.
But to randomly start namecalling and calling ‘racist’ is not a smart move. You don’t get people to understand your point of view that way, you just attack them.
Don’t think we should pander to how foreigners perceive it (particularly to the over-sensitive anglo-saxon cultures). We’ve had this tradition for centuries, nobody in Holland has ever taken it as a racist thing, so that should be good enough.
@ Dr. Nick:
For me it’s not really how foreigners perceive it. I mean there are a lot of things I frown upon in the US, like having a gun in the same home as your children. Or arresting and handcuffing 5 year olds. tasering 80 year olds. That’s the epitome of bizarre to me. I don’t look at that, there’s a major cultural difference.
I’m more worried how the Dutch people perceive it. There are a lot of Dutch people of Black African descent as well. We live in a multicultural society.
True, Zwarte Piet is not meant racist at all. I think the difference (and problem?) lies in the fact that we don’t know the ‘Blackface’ phenomenon in the Netherlands. There’s no such thing here and there never was. So we don’t think about it because we’re not aware of that. We also never had slavery, so we’re not as sensitive to this as American people (expats?) are or could be.
I think there’s nothing wrong with questionsing the tradition as wel as putting it in perspective at the same time. We can keep zwarte piet, but can make the unwitting racist connotations go away.
Just for the record…arresting 5 year olds in handcuffs and tasering 80 year olds is not the norm here (in the US). Quit the opposite! Those stories get news attention because they are so extreme! I know of no one who approves of either situation or who has been in either situation. There are people in every culture who over-react and fail to act reasonably. Of course, there are so many people in the US that it might be more frequent than in some of the smaller countries with smaller populations. Also, American news gets picked up around the world for some strange reason.
Anyway, my point is simply that these things do NOT represent American culture…AT ALL! It is ashame that they have somehow been represented as such.
@ MJ from LA:
Doesn’t seem to be an isolated incident. Handcuffing a toddler would be pretty much unthinkable here. Not sure about the rest of Europe but in the Netherlands this would not happen. Maybe a cultural difference? It really shocked me to read all this.
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/030100/edi_060-7811.shtml
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HizpzYuvhyU
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2008/01/25/2008-01-25_5yearold_boy_handcuffed_in_school_taken_.html
http://www.parentdish.com/2008/03/12/four-year-olds-handcuffed-for-refusing-to-nap/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgNjZcFcnHg
http://lubbockonline.com/stories/030100/edi_060-7811.shtml
http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/specials/weirdflorida/blog/2010/05/mom_has_5yearold_handcuffed_by_1.html
http://www.alldeaf.com/parenting/77971-5-year-old-handcuffed-mom-watches.html
http://www.tcoasttalk.com/2010/02/11/six-year-old-handcuffed-sent-to-mental-facility-after-tantrums-at-port-st-lucie-school/
http://www.policeone.com/juvenile-crime/articles/1861453-Tenn-woman-says-officer-handcuffed-7-year-old/
http://www.wbaltv.com/news/11259978/detail.html
http://www.examiner.com/civil-rights-in-dallas/8-year-old-boy-handcuffed-and-taken-from-school-crandall-tx
The list is endless. There are so many more links.
I have seen an elementary age child handcuffed. I think it was supposed to be a scared straight sort of thing. Who knows. It doesn’t hurt them, so I don’t see any reason to get up in arms over it. I also have no problem with guns in houses with children. As long as they’re unloaded and properly stored there’s no issue. Especially if the parents are responsible enough to educate the kids on gun safety from an early age. However I did babysit for a 11 m/o little boy who’s crawling and cruising around and propped up against the wall in the kitchen was a loaded, cocked, safety off, 12 gauge shot gun. I about had a heart attack.
Oh, also, the wedding dress is stunning and I keep looking at his painted black hand on her gorgeous white dress. Please tell me she didn’t have black paint on her dress.
@ Joy:
Big cultural differences here… if a cop would even think about handcuffing a child that small here, he’d be out of a job pronto and all hell would break loose. May the good Lord have mercy on the first person to ever lay a finger on my child that way :) It’s completely unthinkable here.
About the guns, it’s actually forbidden in the Netherlands to own a weapon. So gun ownership is extremely low here.
I doubt his hands were painted, they’re usually black gloves!
@Kay:
Yes, there are always horror stories about things like that but there are also 300 million people in the US and I can assure you handcuffing 5 year old isn’t part of our “culture”. It’s not something you hear every day by any means. Stories get picked up because they are outrageous, not because we condone them.
Love reading your cultural stories.
So do you celebrate Christmas?
Just as a defnse of some of us “overly sensitive anglo-saxans,” I’d like to say this: Not everyone thinks that way. I lived in Europe for 3 years and loved the different ways the Christmas season is celebrated. A huge group of us were in attndance at a festival where Black Pete was pressnt, and not a one of us had an issue with this tradition. I personally think that those who do have no respect for other cultures and their traditions. And I also believe that those who view Americans as horrible from seeing sensational news stories and what some public figures say, need to remind themselves that if people took the actual time to delve into things a bit deeper, not all of us agree with what is happening or being said.
Sinterklaas is said to be from Spain, so zwarte piet is probably some leftover from when the moors ruled about half of spain.
Others say the black is not racial because it’s not actually a skin-colour: it’s just sud because zwarte piet comes through the chimney! (although this is not the way I see it)
I don’t think there’s any harm in zwarte piet, even if he IS an actual black man. I don’t see how Sinterklaas and his Pieten can’t have a normal, healthy employment-relationship.
(there actually is a song from VOF de kunst, a dutch band, that is all about why there are no white zwarte pieten, and in the song Sinterklaas says that white pieten are no good because they screw up everything and aren’t very nice to kids. )
Furthermore, I’ve noticed it’s quite normal in the US to use little people to play Santa’s elves. I’d say that’s just as good/bad as zwarte piet.
I don’t think children are being given a wrong idea about either little people or black people, because they know zwarte piet and the elves as roles, not actual people. In the netherlands at least, I’ve never heard a child scream out to his mother that he saw zwarte piet when a black man walked past.
Anyway, just a few thoughts on the theme. And I really don’t see how that’s being ‘overly sensitive’…