Those darn Dutch Christmas Traditions

1845: Jan Schenkman writes Saint Nicholas and his Servant; Piet is described in this book as a servant and as black, and is depicted as a dark man wearing clothes associated with a house slave from the West Indies. Steamboat travel becomes part of the mythos from this point. In the 1850 version of Schenkman's book, they are depicted looking much as they do today. The servant gets his African origin but still has no standard name. In later editions Piet was shown in the page costume, the book stayed (with some changes) in print until 1950 and can be seen as the foundation of the current celebration, even though it did use a lot of older ideas and customs.
During recent years the role of Zwarte Pieten has become part of a recurring debate in the Netherlands. Controversial practices include holiday revellers blackening their faces, wearing afro wigs, gold jewellery and bright red lipstick, speaking in a Surinamese accent,and walking the streets throwing candy to passers-by.

Foreign tourists, particularly Americans, often experience culture shock upon encountering the character (to dress in blackface is a gross taboo in America). Since the last decade of the 20th century there have been several attempts to introduce a new kind of Zwarte Piet to the Dutch population, where the Zwarte Pieten replaced their traditional black make-up with all sorts of colours. In 2006 the NPS (en: Dutch Programme Foundation) as an experiment replaced the black Pieten by rainbow-coloured Pieten, but in 2007 reverted to the traditional all-black Pieten.

In 2008, on CBS's "The Early Show" and the NBC syndicated "The Martha Stewart Show", comedian Stephen Colbert cited the story of Black Peter and Sinterklaas as his preferred means of celebrating Christmas, proclaiming himself a "Christmas Originalist". The appearances coincided with the release of his Christmas special, "A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All!".

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• Dutch
• holiday
• Christmas
• Saint Nicholas
• Servant
• Piet
• black
• slave
• West Indies
• Steamboat travel
• African costume
• customs
• Sinterklaas
• children
• Zwarte Piet
• saint
• 5th of December
• saint's day
• gifts.

[NoLNoodle]

I absolutely love that you put christmastime in hollis with this.