Last Saturday we celebrated Sinterklaas, otherwise kown as the birthday of St. Nicholas. The official day is December 6th, but it is tradtionally celebrated on December 5th, the eve of St.Nicholas. But as December 5th was a Sunday this year, we celebrated on Saturday.
Anyway, St. Nicholas is the patron saint of children (and sailors), and on the eve of his birthday we exchange gifts. Legend has it that he lives in Madrid, Spain and that he travels to Holland on his steamship ‘Spain’, together with his helpers, all Black Peters. Very politically incorrect, and very probably historically inaccurate.
We celebrate this occasion by eating chocolate (mostly in the shape of chocolate letters: everyone gets the initial of his first name in chocolate) and pepernoten (small spice biscuits).
Gifts are usually not very expensive, and are accompanied by a poem – supposedly written by St. Nicholas – which more often than not takes the mickey of the recipient.
The standard of writing this year was much improved over last year – I think a bit of competition is creeping in. Before anyone could unwrap their present, they first had to read the accompanying poem out loud. But before anybody got to have their present, we all had to play charades, and you couldn’t open your present until you had won a round.
A lot of fun was had by everybody. Oh, and everybody was: Simon (the host for the evening), Henk, Cees, Niels, Steven and Ronald, Theo and Rene, Jan and Timon, Jan and Rob, Frits and Hank.
It was the first of many celebrations this month.
After celebrating Christmas Day with the relatives (my mother, Jan’s mother, Jan’s brother and sister with their respective children), we celebrated our ‘family’ Christmas on Dec. 26 (what we Dutch refer to as ‘second Christmas Day) with 22 friends. So there were 24 of us in all for dinner. Each course (there were seven) was prepared, served, cleared and the dishes done by one group: that way everybody did their share, without burdening anyone with the complete dinner.