My baby niece with NACHO's Sinterklaas & Piet(s)

I spent Sunday afternoon with my nephew at the Dutch "Sinterklaas" festivities in Berkeley, put on by the head-scratcher of an acronym NACHO, the Netherlands American Cultural Heritage Organization. The figure of Sinterklaas is a bishop who arrives on a steamship from Spain to give presents to good boys and girls. Celebrated on December 5^th in Holland, Sinterklaas was one of my favorite holidays as a child, but somehow it doesn’t translate so well in American culture. For example, Sinterklaas has a black slave, named “Zwarte Piet” (“Black Peter”). In Holland, which doesn't have the same symbolic southern slavery/mistrel show associations with blackface as here in the U.S., Black Peter(s) [there are usually a number of them accompanying Sinterklaas] wear big wigs, crazy costumes, and yes, blackface. This is usually met with shock when Americans hear of this. It’s very politically incorrect.

 What's also considered politically incorrect in our culture is that the Black Peters carry reed switches, to beat the ass of any misbehaving child. Not only will a naughty child get threatened with St. Nic's switch, but if he or she is very bad, they will be stuffed into his burlap sack and taken away to Spain, where Sinterklaas lives. It's all very Brothers Grimm/Der Struwwelpeter. We like our kids good and traumatized in Holland. When I lived in a small Protestant “sinners in the hands of an angry God” village Holland for a year as a child, I remember being both terrified and strangely satisfied when the class bully, "Henky With The Rotten Teeth" (as we called him), was actually stuffed screaming and kicking into Sinterklaas' sack and carried out of the church, and I was more than a little disappointed to see him in class the next day, as I believed he was already working a chain gang in Spain by then.

What fascinates me most about this holiday, though, is how it was taken by the United States and morphed into our current celebrating of Christmas. St. Nicholas really existed, but he was turned into "Santa Claus", and his slaves became elves. His red bishops’ robe and hat became the familiar red suit trimmed in white fur that Americans see on Santa Claus. His white horse became reindeer and a sleigh, though his sack of toys remains the same. Putting carrots and water out by the fireplace for Sinterklaas' horse became putting milk and cookies out. Putting your wooden shoe out for candy and surprises became hanging a stocking here. There are many interesting ways that the holiday transformed. I’m not entirely sure why people here decided to use this mythical figure to commemorate Christ’s birthday, however, though most Americans can’t imagine Christmas without this imagery.

So tomorrow, put out your shoe and cross your fingers. If you’ve been nice, maybe Sinterklaas will ride past your house. If you’ve been naughty, you may get spanked with the switch and taken to Spain. Hmm...Could be a win-win situation for some!