Sinterklaas is in het land...

Last Saturday, while I was safely tucked away in my hotel in Munich, little boys and girls all over The Netherlands were working themselves up for the arrival from Spain by boat of Sinterklaas and his black-faced minions, the Zwarte Pieten, or Black Petes.

There are a lot of different stories surrounding the evolution of Sinterklaas. One of them is that we have the Dutch to thank for "our" Santa Claus, which is derivative of the old Dutch Sint Klaas that Dutch settlers brought over with them to New Amsterdam, now New York.

They traded New Amsterdam for Suriname, a prudent decision. Otherwise, who can tell what the world, and more specifically, New York, my former home, would look like today.

The Dutch have done their best to sanitize Sinterklaas and his Piets. There are tales that say he was a real, and charitable person, living around 2-300 AD, who gave away all of his considerable wealth to aid the poor, or to distressed young women without a dowry.

People like to claim that the Piets get their black faces from going down the chimney, but the fact remains that the Piets come out of a time when the Dutch were heavily involved in the slave trade, happily obliging market demand for slaves by transporting them to where they could be sold.

In modern day "tradition," the Piets are depicted as bumbling, stupid, deceitful, but happy blacks, actually whites in black face, and Sinterklaas as their old and feeble, but kindly master on a white horse. The Piets do all of the work, while Sinterklaas rests. There's even a song children are taught to sing in schools about the Piets with the line, "although I'm black as soot, I mean well, because I'm from Sinterklaas," (al ben ik zwart als roet Ik meen het toch goed Want ik kom van Sinterklaas Sinterklaas). It's true. We were given a CD with that song on it produced by The Netherland's most luxurious department store, the Bijenkorf. It's keeping alive the tradition of teaching all Dutch children that dark skinned people are inferior, you might say. After all, "neger," or "nigger" is still an acceptable and everyday word in the Dutch language.

The Dutch are known for their bluntness. It's perfectly acceptable to insult people directly, a tradition my mother-in-law holds dear, but which I have difficulty with. According to The Netherlands expert Ian Buruma, this is a long-standing feature of Dutch culture, too. You're allowed to insult, say pretty much whatever you want, and no one's supposed to take it seriously. They call it "freedom of speech," or "vrijheid van menings uiting." We in the US like to call them "fighting words," or "words with the intent to incite violence." It's all in the subtleties of interpretation, I suppose. Insults, or free speech. Who can judge. My skin has only grown thinner in my nine years here.

We weren't led to believe that Santa Claus was a real person growing up. Our parents and culture didn't make it into a big ruse for children until they were old and wise enough to figure it out for themselves. Adults in The Netherlands go to great length not to reveal to children that Sinterklaas and the Piets are actually her parents (or mothers) going out shopping, and leaving things in her shoes at night.

This year I've tried to economize by cutting it down to small pieces of chocolate, fruit, or nuts in their shoes, but they'd really rather have bigger presents everyday. Our kids already have more clothes and toys than they need, and I'm personally overwhelmed by all of it, but that's another story. I'm all for "buy nothing" holidays, but most children seem to have a need to be enchanted and amused by presents, so I'd be spoiling all the fun. Besides, I'd have to explain to my children why Sinterklaas comes to all of the other children's houses, and not to ours. It's already becoming a problem with the little chocolates. Other kids get coloring books. That's just what we need in our house. Another coloring book.

Children are expected to put on a little show. They "set their shoes" every night by the door with something for the Sint's horse, a carrot, some water, or hay, and then they have to sing a song. In the morning, they go down to check their shoes. It's all very exciting. Our eight-year-old is less enthusiastic as last year. Perhaps he's beginning to catch on.

December 5th is "pakjes avond," or "present evening," a day that I have come to dread. Everyone, even children, are expected to sit in a circle of chairs, as, one by one, each gift is meticulously unwrapped. This can take hours. There's no music, and nothing to eat. If one of the kids gets up out of turn, he gets yelled at. Really, each present is supposed to come with a rhymn, usually involving a lesson of some kind, but my family here has dispensed with that tradition. Instead, my mother-in-law is fond of putting "rue" on my gifts, which is what bad children got in their shoes, a bundle of sticks to beat them with.

Everything is given anonymously. It's common to give inexpensive, "funny" gifts. Lots more stuff to add to the clutter at home.

Originally, it was a holiday exclusively for children, which would be fine with me, but all of the adults have joined in in recent years, which means presents for the entire family. In the United States we draw names to keep costs down. I'm not too sure about the famed Dutch frugality anymore. Of course, the past several years I have gotten dish towels, and even paper napkins. Oh well. If I don't go, I won't see or talk to any of my Dutch family for at least another several months, if not a year, if not years.

What you're supposed to do is write a list of things you want from Sint, and put it in your shoe this first night he's in The Netherlands. Adults don't set their shoes, but they do pass around lists of things they want every year. I'm expected to write up a list, something I try to avoid. My policy is, you buy yourself something; I buy myself something, then we're even. We don't have to shop for each other. But of course, this is unacceptable. I have to play along, so this year, my husband took over the list task. This year, I decided to come up with some real gifts they might consider.

Sinterklaas is all about joke gifts, too. I just thought of a great joke gift from my sister-in-law, who I saw about 1.5 years ago for the last time, when she actually came to my son's birthday party at the Efteling, the Dutch equivalent of Disney. Here's the gift: A large framed portrait of the close-up she took of my pimple at the Sinterklaas party two years ago at my in-laws house.

I wonder if we'll be eating anything other than fish sandwiches.

Mincing Words

An after thought to my post on the princesses' failed speech... She could have said that she's seen a lot of The Netherlands, and that she's had a lot of opportunities, but that the Dutch identity is too diverse, and mutable, perhaps, to encapsulate into one simple idea or catch phrase. It's funny that neither she nor the expensive speech writer, nor the think tank behind her came up with this idea. It's so much more nuanced, so much kinder, so much more thoughtful than what she/they said. What an insult to the Dutch people to say that their identity doesn't exist. For all of my complaining, this is an old culture, and there's so much to say about it. It exists in multitudes. I think Maxima, the dingbat, should stick to shopping and traipsing around in expensive clothes.

Dual-citizenship, Princesses and Other Such Nonsense

"There is no reason to accept the doctrines crafted to sustain power and privilege, or to believe that we are constrained by mysterious and unknown social laws. These are simply decisions made within institutions that are subject to human will and that must face the test of legitimacy. And if they do not meet the test, they can be replaced by other institutions that are more free and more just, as has happened often in the past."
Noam Chomsky

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd."
Bertrand Russell, British mathematician, philosopher



As I've repeated so many times, The Netherlands is a savory place to live. In the United States, we have the military-industrial complex, corporate controlled media, rising poverty, exploitation, and countless other ills befalling, and controlling the people in unseen measure. The Netherlands isn't much different from the USA in this regard, I'm sure. On days that my stomach isn't all too weak, I sometimes read the Dutch newspaper, the NRC Handelsblad, and it's just as filled with disinformation and hearsay as any other respectable newspaper.

A lot of Dutch people have become obsessed with people who hold dual, or multiple citizenship. There have been heated debates on the pros and cons of getting rid of dual-nationality, forcing people who want a coveted Dutch passport to give up their original nationality to get one.

My status as an American married to a Dutchman give me the legal right to dual-citizenship. When I went in to file for a Dutch passport, all I had to do was to say a few sentences in Dutch, tell them how long I'd lived here, and that I wanted to apply. The woman at the city hall here turned around, got the paperwork out for me, and told me how much the fee was. I asked her if she was kidding, because I couldn't believe it could be that easy. It was.

A lot of Dutch people like to get all hot under the collar when it comes to dual-citizenship. They'd like it if you forgot that you ever lived anyplace else, spoke another language, said, did, or thought anything other than what they think is right and proper.

They've since made it tougher for people to get a Dutch passport, made up a test, and a language requirement. I had already gone through all of the rigmarole of learning the language, and I've discovered that I know a bit more about the country, and its geography, than some of the Dutch people I talk to.

One of my favorite people, the future queen, Princess Maxima, has recently come under fire for saying that the Dutch identity doesn't exist, or that she hasn't found it. She identified The Netherlands as "a cookie with coffee," "open windows," and other deeply sought observations. After being escorted around the society for years, personally taught Dutch by the most highly regarded Dutch language professors, and given every privilege, a job at the UN, palatial homes, travel, couture clothing, etc. since 2001, this is all she could come up with. It goes without saying that a girl doesn't need to be too smart to marry the prince. Still, she's lauded in the press as being a "great woman," with "beautiful," "sympathetic eyes," just like the queen's. Her eyes will save the monarchy, and she'll come into the good graces of the Dutch public, even after summing up their culture as a cookie with coffee. Even I, with all of my problems and disadvantages, could come up with more than that. (More on that later.)

In The Netherlands we are all required by law to subsidize the monarchy. I haven't been home to visit my family in nearly two years because I don't have the money, but I still have to pay for the princess to say stupid things, and to run back and forth to Brussels to get her clothes made. In the land of greater equality, we have a monarchy.

When I was growing up in the United States, I always thought that monarchies went hand and hand with totalitarianism, feudalism, and general repression. I also naively suspected that they were naturally abolished as a society became more modern and sophisticated. They were something that fell away with the right to vote. Not so in The Netherlands, and many other industrialised societies, Belgium, Sweden, Japan, England, etc...

It's become a source of personal resentment that I came here, struggled, shelled out money to learn the language, taken care of my children myself, but that someone like Maxima comes here, and is given everything. I was even accepted to a Dutch university, but was denied funding because I was over 27 years old. As long as Maxima can wear Blahniks, what does it matter. Inequality exists the world over, and the Dutch like to perpetuate it by keeping their monarchy in place. They are an example of supreme egalitarianism the world over, to be sure.

People who criticize the queen, or anyone in her family, are subject to criticism for daring to speak against these holy untouchables. In writing this, I could be committing treason. Maxima could charge me in court for defamation, as has happened with some people who've said unkind things about the queen. In the land of free speech, speech is not free.

If they finally decide that dual-citizenship should be outlawed, that'll be fine with me. Unfortunately, my children will have to choose between the country they were born in, and the country they'll be living in soon. For me, the choice will be clear enough. At least in the United States I can get funding if I want to get an education.