Now most of the non dutch people who read my blog have hardly any clue who they are and what they meant for my and many other dutch grownups, childhood. To keep it simple. they are comparable with Santa Claus and his reindeers and elfs. (He actually originated from our Sinterklaas.)  Theres no one without the other. Where  you put cookies and milk out for Santa, the kids put out a carrot and some hay for Sinterklaas his  white horse. Since I am practical I decide to quote a little bit form wikipedia about  this Dutch tradition which is also celebrated in (former) Dutch colonies and Belgium.

Sinterklaas (also called Sint Nicolaas) is a traditional Winter holiday figure in Dutch-speaking Europe (Netherlands and Flanders), and is also well known in the former Dutch colonies. Every year he is celebrated in The Netherlands, one day before Saint Nicholas died (5 December) and on (6 December) in Belgium. His servant is Black Peter. Sinterklaas is the basis of the mythical holiday figure of Santa Claus in the United States. Sinterklaas has nothing to do with Christmas. Christmas will also be celebrated in the Netherlands. So Santa Claus is not the same as Sinterklaas (in the Netherlands).

Another Wikipedia site reads a little more also about Zwarte Piet:

There are various explanations of the origin of Zwarte Piet. One is that Saint Nicholas liberated an Ethiopian slave boy called Pieter from a Myra market, and the boy was so grateful he decided to stay with Saint Nicholas as a helper.

In modern adaptations for television, the Saint has developed a Piet for every function: there is a head Piet (Hoofdpiet), a navigation Piet (wegwijspiet) to navigate the steamboat from Spain to the Netherlands, a packing Piet (pakjespiet) to pack all the gifts, an acrobatic Piet to climb roofs and stuff presents down the chimney, or to climb down the chimneys themselves. Over the years many stories have been added, and Zwarte Piet has developed from a rather unintelligent helper into a valuable assistant to the absent-minded Saint.

And I found Many other sites that speak of  this tradition to explain it to the non believers 🙂 Personally I  appreciate the humor and truthfulness this information has been presented with. The site is called Stuff Dutch people like and here’s a small quote from their page

Q:Huh? Who are these black guys? Bodyguards? Elves?
A: These friends, Zwarte Piets, are Sint‘s mischievous helpers and they can be seen through town violently whipping hard-stone like cookies (aka: pepernoten) at children and passerby’s. Duck!

Q:I don’t get it. Why are their faces painted black?
A:  Please. Save yourself the trouble and don’t go asking this question in your Dutch workplace. You won’t make any friends. You can speak your mind here.

Q:Wait. Am I allowed to say anything critical about the Sinterklaas tradition?
A: No.

So aswell in my house we celebrate this tradition every single year still.  Theres no Dutch childhood complete without Sinterklaas en Zwarte Piet. Now theres been a discussion on this  tradition for  like  quite some time, like over a year people are  arguing and beginning law suites against  our  Zwarte Piet. For people who are not Dutch or don’t live here  I can understand our tradition can come across a tad odd. But honestly during my whole childhood I never ever have had any thoughts of racism because of Zwarte Piet.  ( Or any racistic thoughts at all and I still don’t)  Neither have I ever feelt that it was used to hurt anyone at all. I think the people who claim to have the biggest issues with our zwarte piet don’t really have a issue with zwarte piet. There is NOTHING wrong with our Zwarte Piet. They have issues with racism and they are right to have issues with that, I don’t accept racism either.Racism is not acceptable simple as is.  Ruining our Dutch tradition is not acceptable either. Find another way to fight racism.. This isn’t the way, its taking things out of context and by doing that u are hurting another culture. Thats the message I wanted to bring out here today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 18th, 2014 at 12:18 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.