Festivals and celebrations.
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a. At Saint Nicholas an old man with a white beard comes from Spain to Holland with his helpers that help him getting, packing and delivering presents (a kind of like Sante with his elves). But nowadays the population finds it racist because the helpers are dark skinned. which, in their eyes, refers to slavery. With Saint Nicholas, everyone gets his shoe and puts it in front of the fireplace. afterwards the children sing Saint Nicholas songs. then, at night, Saint Nicholas' helpers fill the shoes with a little present. And at 5 december, Saint Nicholas' birthday, the children get a lot of presents. Saint Nicholas also gives away food, which are half round spheres from gingerbread. In this time we also use to visit our grandparents, where we get presents as well.
With Saint Martin, which is on the 11th of november, we make a lantern and we go from door to door, singing songs. in return we get sweets. It's pretty much like the American Halloween. Kids can do this until they reached primary school (although quite a lot of people violate that rule XD). Most houses aren't decorated like in America, but it's all about the sweets anyways.
At kingsday we celebrate the birthday of our king, which is on the 27th of april. Most of us wear orange clothes, because that's our national colour. Kingsday mostly exists of a Kingmarket, in which a lot of people sell their old stuff, a kind of like e-bay. this goes on till 12 o' clock, afterwards there are some nice events and stuff.
b. Saint Nicholas is a celebration for kids <10 years, some people don't like Saint Nicholas because of ethnic reasons, they find Black pete (his helper) racist, because he is called 'black' pete, and because Saint Nicholas leads them, which also happened back in the day of slavery, they find this although the story states that Pete offered help to Saint Nicholas because he respected for what Nicholas did and wanted to help, the rest of his family also wanted to help. And they are all called Pete because Nicholas couldn't remember all of their names. Yet the government agrees with it being racist, so they are planning to slowly remove the bodypaint (which is VERY bad, because we have a Saint Nicholas news, in which famous Dutch actors play, and the kids would recognize them without the bodypaint).
Kingsday, on the other hand,is an event for all ages, this event is typically Dutch (I don't know any other country doing this) and noone finds it disciminating, which is a good thing. In the Netherlands we have a lot of refugees who probably don't know what it's all about, because the king doesn't have any power anyways, so why would we celebrate his birthday. Of course there are also refugees that are fully integrated already.
c. With Saint Nicholas we want to give kids the best time of the year by giving them presents and sweets, also for immigrants. As is being said earier, the helpers of Saint Nicholas are dark skinned, but right now people think it is racist to have black helpers, so they are trying to give them another colour like green or yellow. We think that doing that won't just spoil the festival, it will also have no effect, because when his helpers are red, indians (the native americans, not from india) or people with diseases that turn their skin red will feel offended.
Kings day is also not fully understanded by others, some people from another country don't even celebrate it at all. We kind of understand it and as long as they don't ruin it for us we think it's fine.
d. We have many festivals in the Netherlands such as Saint Nicholas, Christmas, easter, kingsday and a lot more. But unlike most other festivals, everyone celebrates kingsday, because you can be too old for Saint Nicholas, or too young for other festivals. But kingsday is liked by everyone.
e. Most of the schools do something with the celebrations such as putting a Christmas tree in the yard of the school, or giving the students a letter made out of chocolate (traditional Saint Nicholas present). At Christmas we watched a Christmas performance of the higher classes. With a Christmas spirit inside.
f. On newyears eve there is a big difference between the way we celebrate it and the way they celebrated it. There is a lot of firework there days, which was quite rare back there. There is also more vandalism these days because people want to experiment with their firework (some people lose their car due to this). Yet the sky looks so much more amazing compared to the sky our grandparents saw back in the day. These days the government also organises firework shows, which is much saver for the population, some people even want all firework to be illegal if it isn't lit for a fireworkshow. Saint Nicholas changed as well, back then children were afraid of black pete. He also walked around with a kind of a broom, called 'de roe'. He used it to hit naughty children. Nowadays black Pete is friendly and polite, and he gives candy to the children (quite annoying to see other children to get candy whilst you are 'too old' for it, and you have even less chance of getting candy when you are tall -_-).
g. We respect the culture of other nations and the habits/celebrations they have. For example we don't have any problems with the islamic ramadan, or the indian powderfest. Some Dutch people even join such festivals for the fun. They also celebrate some festivals we celebrate as well.
h. So we think that these festivals/celebrations should be respected in exchange that we respect the ones of other people. We are quite angry that other people are trying to change our festivals just because they might offend people.