Sinterklaas

[WebGirl]

Hey everyone,

Hope you all had a good weekend. Yesterday was Saint Nicholas Eve here. It is a traditional holiday for the kids in the Netherlands. I haven't really celebrated but I got some chocolate and a nice dinner
I was explaining the holiday a while ago to my hubby, since you all don't celebrate or know this day. It was hard to explain though, because once you try to explain it in another language, it seems really funny. Kindof weird actually. Saint Nicholas was a man who cared for poor children. So he would go around the country and give them money and gifts. He rides a white horse and was accompanied by black men. Nowadays, those "black men" are always white people with black paint on their faces. So now, we keep that story alive by welcoming Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas as we call him, and celebrate his birthday on december 5th. Kids put their shoes up at the fireplace every night and they recieve a little gift in them the next morning. On december 5th they get the bigger presents and there's always lots of candy.
The funny thing is though, today my dad explained to me that your Santa Claus actually is our Sinterklaas. I never knew that but I found it funny. So I went and looked at Wikipedia and here's what I found:

Sinterklaas 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) which had been swapped by the Dutch for Suriname, reinvented their Sinterklaas tradition, as Saint Nicholas was a symbol of the city's non-English past. The name Santa Claus supposedly derived from older Dutch Sinte Klaas.

We do celebrate christmas, and now we also have a Santa Claus (we call him de Kerstman which means the christmas man if you translate it literally), but only few families here give presents then. Christmas for us is more like Thanksgiving to you, where we spend time with the family and have a nice dinner.
I just wanted to share this with you

[shar-she]

Thanks that is really good information I knew about the dutch Santa Clause and I knew about the children putting their shoes under the bed like the American children hanging stockings....I like to learn about the other celebrations in the world...and how we all have the need to celebrate