In Amsterdam, you can sleep with prostitutes and smoke weed whilst doing it and so on and so forth blah blah it's awesome, yes we know, thank you Holland, great work. However, this has had a strange effect on the Dutch people. Because their laws are so tolerant it means that there is an assumption that so are the people, which they are ...mostly... until it comes to Christmas, that is. Which is insane. Really insane. As apposed to our Anglo-American view of this wholesome, commercial and sometimes (but mostly not) genuinely religious holiday, where people give us nice things for free, the Dutch do things a little differently. We witnessed their version of Christmas and it scared the shit out of us. So what goes down that is so unsettling? We'll try to explain.
Some time in late November, Saint Nicholas comes to town. Now, he does not live in the North Pole like a good Father Christmas should. He doesn't even live in the South Pole where we assume all the Polar Bears live. He's from Turkey. Okay, that's fine actually. Saint Nic was the Bishop of Turkey. That makes sense. However he lives in Spain now. As far as we're aware Father Christmas has never been much of a fan of Tapas, but that's ok too. We can live with the fact that he has chosen to live in Spain. Spain's nice. We like Spain, we all like Spain. Spain is FINE.
Every year good ol' Saint Nicholas makes his trip over from Spain to The Netherlands to hand out sweets to children, ask them what they want and be generally pleasant. Or so you'd think. Instead of the threat of coal in the stocking, the children are literally threatened with the promise that if they misbehave Saint Nicholas will put them in a bag and pretend to kick them and then beat them with a cane. Note, he won't actually do it, just threaten them with a beating. It's like when film or theatre critics note that a piece of work is "made all the more horrifying not by the use of violence, but by it's immediate and impending threat". We're sure they say stuff like that all the time.
Anyway that's the tip of the iceberg. The real kicker is who Saint Nic brings with him, a character called Zwarte Peter. Zwarte means black. Black Peter, or Black Pete for short. It doesn't really matter. Now, the fable behind the myth of Black Pete is that he is based on three moorish children who Saint Nicholas, who was at the time presumably just known as Nicholas, saved from execution. One story cites that they chose from that time on to help Nicholas go about his days delivering presents to smiling, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, strapping Dutch children (The Dutch are the tallest nation in the world). The other version of the tale is a little more uncomfortable. They're his slaves. The third version goes so far as to suggest that Black Pete may simply be the devil, enslaved (there's that word again) by Nicholas.
As a story goes, this all seems fine. Old and a bit weird, but for the most part fine. However, the real fun comes with the parade. Parade? Oh yes there's a parade. A mind-boggling, awe-inducing, reality-bending, traumatic parade that will reshape all notions of time, space and history. At least that's what happened for us, everyone else just seemed to be having a fairly pleasant time. We'll try and run through these life altering events as best we can, but like the death of a child, it's hard to talk about.
We headed out to where we heard the parade was passing through. We knew things were taking a turn for the surreal when, as we approached, we saw a child. A child in a little colourful chimney sweep outface. In blackface. And a wig. An afro wig. He was dressed as 'Black Pete'. We'd heard this happened but were shocked into an immediate state of psychological repression and continued to walk on, slowly shaking our heads and muttering under our collective breath "get it together Marilyn, get your shit together". It didn't get any easier. For a few minutes we waited by the side of the road, crowded with hordes of Dutch people who all looked on eagerly into the distance. It was like the Pope was coming to town. Except The Dutch are Calvinists, so maybe it was like Calvin coming to town. Then it happened. We weren't sure at first but soon enough it became very clear what was happening. Seven hundred white Dutch men, women and children dancing through the streets, throwing out sweets and crisps, playing music, singing. They were on floats, some were playing instruments, some were even on roller-skates! The one thing they had in common? Blackface. The lot of them, all dressed as Black Pete. We looked around ready to see the horror, the outrage, people screaming, police holding back angry crowds of incensed, violent Dutch, who in their utopian city of tolerance, understanding and communal happiness, would not stand for what can only be described as the largest minstrel show on Earth.
Nope. They sang songs instead.
The whole time our mouths were open, our eyes wide and our minds fried. We were suddenly in 1920s America and this was all ok. At one point we were shot in the face with sweets from a cannon. A cannon! On a float! Saint Nicholas finally appeared on a big white horse, but no one seemed too interested. It was Black Pete's day in the spotlight. After the parade finished we stumbled away, dazed and a little shaken, as if we'd just escaped a small car crash. And once home, immediately made a few medicinal cups of tea and had a well-needed sit-down.
We would recommend everyone sees it at least once. It is genuinely incredible. You can also sign up to be Black Pete. We're going to do it next year.
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