Arie Celebrates Sinterklaas Day

I had an exciting cultural adventure this weekend. December 5th in Holland is Sinterklaas Day (that is, the feast of Saint Nicholas), and the Dutch community of Kampala went all-out. Somehow I was invited.

I'm sure I'm missing some of the details, but the Sinterklaas story is roughly as follows: Sinterklaas is a man dressed in red with a big white beard and a big mitre (bishop hat) who arrives each November via steamship from Spain (he was born in Turkey but lives in Spain). He carries a big gold stick called a crosier. He sails into the Netherlands by boat and then rides a white horse named Amerigo around the country distributing gifts. (The day after his big national arrival, many towns and villages have local arrivals.) Sinterklaas returns home on December 5th (Sinterklaas Day) because December 6th is his birthday and he wants to spend it at home in Spain.

Not all children receive gifts, though. Sinterklaas has a giant book in which is written the story of each child's behavior over the past year (in some traditions, two books -- a gold one with the good kids and a black one with the bad kids). Sinterklaas looks each child up in the book, and if the child was good, there are presents. If the child has been bad, the child goes into Sinterklaas's sack and Sinterklaas takes the child back to Spain with him, and the child must spend the year in Spain. If I were in Holland in the winter I might want a free trip to Spain, but apparently Dutch children do not think like that.

Also, if you put your shoes on the mantle in the weeks leading up to Sinterklaas Day, Sinterklaas might fill them with candy or small presents (me: if your shoes are wooden, you could nail them there. Dutch people: *glare*). You might fill them with hay or carrots for Amerigo. (In pre-Christian times, children left shoes filled with hay or carrots for Odin's white horse Sleipnir, and Odin showed his gratitude by leaving candy.) Sinterklaas also drops presents down the chimney. Because few people have chimneys these days, Sinterklaas now leaves presents outside the door, rings the bell, and runs away.

Which brings me to the best part. Sinterklaas himself doesn't actually carry a giant sack of presents or slide down anyone's chimney or knock and run. He has people for that. Specifically, he has Zwarte Piet, that is, Black Pete, his assistant. Black Pete carries the sack, slides down the chimneys, rings the bell and runs away, everything. He wears a clownish costume with big hoop earrings and is typically portrayed as horrifically incompetent. I'm repeatedly assured that Black Pete is black because of chimney soot, not because of racism, oh no no, I'm totally misinterpreting it, really, there are no racial connotations, stop looking at us like that.

Later research revealed that one story of Black Pete is that three Moorish kids were going to be executed, but Sinterklaas saved them, so they decided to help him out. The "black" refers either to them being chimneysweeps or that they were Moops. The Black Pete clothes are chimneysweep clothes. Black Pete carries a sack filled with toys for good children and a "roe", a bunch of branches used to smack bad children (possibly a chimneysweep broom). Another story is that Nicholas saved an Ethiopian boy named Piter from a market, and the boy was so grateful that he decided to stay and help. Black Pete throws golden candy coins, a reference to when Saint Nicholas saved girls from prostitution by throwing golden coins through their windows at night (to pay their father's debts). (On Sinterklaas day in 1941, the Dutch airforce dropped candy over Amsterdam.)

Sinterklaas actually has dozens of Black Petes, each a different (adjective) Pete. For instance, there might be Sad Pete, who's always depressed; Clumsy Pete, who drops things; Smart Pete, who actually does all the actual work of helping Sinterklaas, etc. These days there's often also Robot Pete. It reminds me of the Smurfs, except without the anti-intellectualism and Communism.

Wikipedia says that until World War II, there was only one Black Pete. When Canadians liberated the Netherlands, unaware of the tradition, they figured, "if one Zwarte Piet was fun, several Zwarte Pieten is even more fun. Ever since Saint Nicolas is helped by a group of Zwarte Pieten." Citation needed indeed.

In Holland, there are some other traditions too. You typically write a short poem for your family members, apparently generally criticizing them about something that has been bothering you that you wouldn't normally say. There's also the exchange of presents, called "surprises" because there's often something tricky about them -- a disguised package or a treasure hunt. Sinterklaas, of course, is played by a Dutch person with a big fake beard. Black Pete is played by a Dutch person in blackface.

They don't have a lot of black people in Holland. A friend told me that when one year when she was young, a few weeks after Sinterklaas Day she saw a few black people at a store and asked her mother (in a loud voice) why they hadn't gone back to Spain with the other Black Petes.

So this weekend ten of us piled into a rather small car and drove to the Entebbe Sailing Club on the shore of Lake Victoria. The place was crawling with tiny Dutch children, mostly blond, some apparently adopted Ugandans, some mixed race. There were also a lot of Dutch adults. We had some traditional Sinterklaas Day snacks that were OK but not as good as chocolate. There was a tent and lots of kids were under it being entertained by a host.

Mostly they were singing traditional songs about Sinterklaas that I'm sure would be cute if I understood Dutch, but I was just left there wondering "what have they done to Frère Jacques?". The host had a special chair that was Sinterklaas's chair, and I'm told that part of the story is that no one else sits in it out of respect for Sinterklaas. So people would stand in front of the chair, count "one, two, three!" and then try to sit, but of course the children would pull the chair out from under them so as not to disrespect Sinterklaas.

After a bunch of slapstick and traditional songs, we heard a boda drive up, and on the back was Black Pete. He had a large box with a cake in it and was very excited. I was too -- I had never actually seen someone in blackface before (for any non-Americans who stumble on this page: Blackface has an unfortunate place in the history of race relations of the United States). I was a little surprised, actually, that they used Dutch people in blackface given that we were, you know, in Africa, but so be it. So Pete ran all around -- in typical Black Pete style he suddenly made a big dramatic show of tipping the cake box over (it was filled with confetti) and then crying.

After some more antics, Pete pointed out over the water, and sure enough, there was a distant boat coming toward the beach. All the children (and many adults) ran down to the sand as the boat pulled up, and out climbed Sinterklaas with three more Black Petes. Mobbed by children, the group made their way up to the tent and Sinterklaas sat in his chair.

The children sang Sinterklaas a few songs and wished him a happy birthday, and then the Black Petes brought him a large book (that the children had been told was a sign-in book when they arrived). A Black Pete called out each child's name and the child came up, sat on Sinterklaas's lap, they chatted for a bit, and then he gave them a present. (The parents brought the presents and handed them to a Black Pete when the kids weren't looking.)

Then the first Black Pete returned with a cake and very carefully handed it to Sinterklaas, who had another Black Pete carve it up and distribute it to the audience. Also there were drinks. I'm told there's a movement to switch to Green Pete or Rainbow Pete -- apparently kids were to be told that Sinterklaas sailed through a rainbow on the way to Holland, and now all the Petes are different colors -- but most of the Dutch people I met felt that Black Pete was totally fine and couldn't understand what the problem was.

Once all the kids had their presents, it descended into chaos -- Dutch kids on pogo sticks, Dutch kids in the pool, Dutch kids eating tons of candy. Wrapping paper and boxes everywhere. It was really strange, in the middle of a poor country filled with black people, to see all these white kids with all these shiny new toys.

That's about when Sinterklaas decided to make his exit. He and his Petes fought their way through the mob and down to the boat, where they waved goodbye to the children and sailed off into the distance. The party kept going for another hour or two while the DJ played traditional Sinterklaas music. Traditional Sinterklaas music, apparently, is music that starts like an American song and then abruptly becomes Dutch people singing about Sinterklaas. So suddenly I would hear, say, the opening chords to Pretty Woman and would perk up, but just when I was expecting Roy Orbison, I would get a Dutch kids' chorus praising Sinterklaas for giving them stuff in an entirely different melody. Whee. On the plus side, I got to hear Staying Alive in Dutch.

Anyway, then we drove home to have our own Sinterklaas Day day, including boerenkool, a traditional food made from potatoes and cabbage that's not bad, but not especially good (not much flavor) and a present exchange. I got to play Black Pete (I emphatically passed on the blackface), sneaking outside with a sack of presents, banging on the door, then running around and scaling the wall and trying to look innocent. My present was a chocolate letter, apparently a Sinterklaas Day tradition (possibly because Odin invented runes). We also had the non-traditional Sinterklaas Day blackout, which was unexciting. And we had kruitnoten, traditional little gingerbread cookies.

So that's Sinterklaas Day. Except for the racial undertones and the saint part, it's inclusive, non-denominational, inclusive, commercial, and a generally sweet holiday (although it of course celebrates the Day of Saint Nicholas). My Dutch friends said that it was very strange and a little sad to be celebrating it in t-shirts on the beach instead of covered in snow. I didn't mind. I understand that Dutch Christians also celebrate Christmas, but it's more of a religious holiday, not the giant commercial binge that it is in the United States, although some are a little miffed that they gave us Sinterklaas and we're giving back Santa Claus (who is increasingly popular in the Netherlands).

As you might suspect, Sinterklaas is the basis for the U.S. Santa Claus. The most widely accepted story is that back when New York was the Dutch New Amsterdam, Sinterklaas was widely celebrated, but after independence people no longer felt tied to the Dutch tradition and the holiday was reinvented. A lot of the traditions survive in modified form -- leaving food for Santa's reindeer, hanging stockings by the chimney, Santa Claus with a big white beard and a red outfit giving presents. Reindeer instead of a white horse, the North Pole instead of Spain, and elves instead of black people though.