Saint Nicolas

The Story of Saint Nicolas
Saint Nicolas
Saint Nicolas is an elderly, stately and serious man with white hair and a long, full beard. He wears a long red cape or chasuble over a traditional white bishop's alb and sometimes red stola, dons a red mitre, and holds a gold-coloured crosier, a long ceremonial shepherd's staff with a fancy curled top. He carries a big book that tells whether each individual child has been good or naughty in the past year. He traditionally rides a white horse.

 Zwarte Piet

A Zwarte Piet (Black Pete, plural Zwarte Pieten) is a servant of Saint Nicolas, usually an adolescent in blackface with black curly hair, dressed up like a 17-th century page in a colourful dress, often with a lace collar, and donning a feathered cap.
Saint Nicolas and his Black Pete usually carry a bag which contains candy for nice children and a roe, a chimney sweep's broom made of willow branches, used to spank naughty children. Some of the older Saint Nicolas songs make mention of naughty children being put in the bag and being taken back to Spain. The Zwarte Pieten toss candy around, a tradition supposedly originating in Saint Nicolas' story of saving three young girls from prostitution by tossing golden coins through their window at night to pay their father's debts.
There are various explanations of the origins of the helpers. The oldest explanation is that the helpers symbolize the two ravens Hugin and Munin who informed Odin on what was going on. In later stories the helper depicts the defeated devil. The devil is defeated by either Odin or his helper Nörwi, the black father of the night. Nörwi is usually depicted with the same staff of birch (Dutch: "roe") as Zwarte Piet.
Another, more modern story is that Saint Nicolas liberated an Ethiopian slave boy called 'Piter' (from Saint Peter) from a Myra market, and the boy was so grateful he decided to stay with Saint Nicolas as a helper.
The Zwarte Pieten have roughly the same relationship to the Dutch Saint Nicolas that the elves have to America's Santa Claus. According to tradition, the saint has a Piet for every function: there are navigation Pieten ("wegwijspiet") to navigate the steamboat from Spain to the Netherlands, and acrobatic Pieten to climb roofs and stuff presents down the chimney, or to climb down the chimneys themselves. Over the years many stories have been added. In many cases, the Pieten are quite bad at their job, for instance the navigation Piet might point in the wrong direction. This provides some comedy in the annual parade of Saint Nicolas coming to the Netherlands, and can also be used to laud the progress of children at school by having the Piet give the wrong answer to, for example, a simple question like "what is 2+2?", so that the child can give the right answer.
With the influx of immigrants to the Netherlands starting in the late 1950s, Zwarte Piet is felt by some to be racist. Today, Zwarte Pieten have become more modern servants and parents often tell their children that the Pieten have black faces because they climb down dirty, soot-filled chimneys.Although, this modern variation on the tradition is often critiqued by expatriates and locals as being a "cover story" because it does not explain the curly, black hair and large, red lips. The character continues to be a source of controversy and was the subject of protests throughout the Netherlands during the holiday season of 2011.Presents
Traditionally, in the weeks between his arrival and 5 December, before going to bed, children put their shoes next to the fireplace chimney of the coal-fired stove or fireplace. In modern times, they may put them next to the central heating unit. They leave the shoe with a carrot or some hay in it and a bowl of water nearby "for Saint Nicolas' horse", and the children sing a Saint Nicolas song. The next day they will find some candy or a small present in their shoes.
Typical Sinterklaas treats traditionally include: hot chocolate, mandarin oranges, pepernoten, letter-shaped pastry filled with almond paste or chocolate letter (the first letter of the child's name made out of chocolate), speculaas (sometimes filled with almond paste), chocolate coins and marzipan figures. Newer treats include kruidnoten (a type of shortcrust biscuit or gingerbread biscuits) and a figurine of Saint Nicolas made of chocolate and wrapped in colored aluminum foil.
Poems can still accompany bigger gifts as well. Instead of such gifts being brought by Saint Nicolas, family members may draw names for an event comparable to Secret Santa. Gifts are to be creatively disguised (for which the Dutch use the French word "surprise"), and are usually accompanied by a humorous poem which often teases the recipient for well-known bad habits or other character deficiencies.

Saint Nicolas, Santa Claus, and Christmas

Saint Nicolas is the basis for the North American figure of Santa Claus. It is often claimed that during the American War of Independence the inhabitants of New York City, a former Dutch colonial town (New Amsterdam) reinvented their Saint Nicolas tradition, as Saint Nicholas was a symbol of the city's non-English past. The name Santa Claus supposedly derived from older Dutch Sinter Klaas. However, the Saint Nicholas Society was not founded until 1835, almost half a century after the end of the war. In a study of the "children's books, periodicals and journals" of New Amsterdam, the scholar Charles Jones did not find references to Saint Nicholas or Sinterklaas. Not all scholars agree with Jones's findings, which he reiterated in a book in 1978. Howard G. Hageman, of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, maintains that the tradition of celebrating Saint Nicolas in New York existed in the early settlement of the Hudson Valley. He agrees that "there can be no question that by the time the revival of St. Nicholas came with Washington Irving, the traditional New Netherlands observance had completely disappeared." However, Irving's stories prominently featured legends of the early Dutch settlers, so while the traditional practice may have died out, Irving's St. Nicholas may have been a revival of that dormant Dutch strand of folklore. In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, Irving inserted a dream sequence featuring St. Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon — a creation others would later dress up as Santa Claus.
But was Irving the first to revive the Dutch folklore of Saint Nicolas? In New York, two years earlier John Pintard published a pamphlet with illustrations of Alexander Anderson in which he calls for to make Saint Nicholas patron Saint of New York and to start a Saint Nicolas tradition. He was apparently assisted by the Dutch, because in his pamphlet he included an old Dutch Saint Nicolas poem with English translation. In the Dutch poem, Saint Nicholas is referred to as 'Sancta Claus'. Ultimately, his initiative helped Saint Nicolas to pop up as Santa Claus in the Christmas celebration, which returned - freed of episcopal dignity - via England and later Germany to Europe again.
The Saint Nicholas Society of New York celebrates a feast on 6 December to this day. The town of Rhinebeck in Dutchess County, New York, which was founded by Dutch and German immigrants, has an annual Saint Nicolas celebration. It includes Saint Nicolas' crossing the Hudson River and a parade up to the center of town.
During the Reformation in 16th-17th century Europe, many Protestants changed the gift bringer to the Christ Child or Christkindl (corrupted in English to Kris Kringle). Similarly, the date of giving gifts changed from December 5 or 6th to Christmas Eve.

So Saint Nicolas came!

I also ate sauerkraut and red cabbage with apple mush. I don't really like cabbage...

 Also saw The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn film, in french and 3D! It was a very great movie and is really popular in Belgium because if you didn't know the writer(Hergé) of the comic book was Belgian.  The Smurfs is also a Belgian thing... Exams next week, hope it goes well...