On Sinterklaas — two scenes on being Dutch

At home

My mother was born in 1924 in Orange City, Iowa, and her first language was Dutch. If you know anything about Orange City or Sioux County, you know the Dutch influence is ever-present. In 1924 her father had been in the United States for 19 years, and it’s likely he knew some English, but Dutch was spoken at home.

Church services were still held in Dutch, so it must have been a bit of a shock when the school told my mother’s parents that her older brother, Reynold, could not go to school until he could speak English. She was a scant 13 months younger than her brother, and so, the following year, when she was old enough to start classes, Reynold enrolled in the same grade as his little sister.

When I was growing up, whenever my parents didn’t want me to know something sordid or scandalous, they spoke in Dutch. They were the second generation of immigrants, and they did what most second-generation immigrants have done. They put away the old tongue and the old ways, and they assimilated. They believed in the American melting pot, although when you live in a largely heterogenous community, the melting doesn’t go very deep.

Therefore, I wore my ethnicity loosely and took it for granted because just about everyone else was Dutch, too, or German, or Luxembourger.

With my own children, who have all sorts of European bloodlines, I wanted to give them something of my heritage. I bought a pair of wooden shoes when my daughter was small, and around the age of three, about the time her brother was born, we started to celebrate Sinterklaas, a Dutch pre-Christmas festival on Dec. 6.

Dutch children fill their wooden shoes with carrots and place them outside on Dec. 5. Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa, will feed the carrots to the white horse he rode on, and if the children have been good, their shoes will be filled with treats and small gifts. If they’ve been bad, they will receive lumps of coal.

The myth of Sinterklaas is related to Saint Nicholas, who is said to be patron saint of children and toymakers and other folks who toiled hard for their livelihoods. Somewhere in the Dutch telling, though, the story transformed to include a Moorish assistant, Zwarte Piet. In this version of the story, Sinterklaas and “Black Pete” enter the village and Piet hands out goodies from a special sack. For bad children, the threat of coal in their shoes was the least of their worries; Zwarte Piet would haul them to Spain never to return.

Consider for a moment the challenge that arises when a very White community wants to include a Zwarte Piet in their Sinterklaas parade.

And abroad

In Season 3, episode 2 of the FX series, Atlanta (now available on Hulu), Alfred, Earn, Darius, and Vanessa are four Black Atlantans who find themselves in The Netherlands during the Christmas season. The whole series explores race in novel and unsettling ways, and this episode is no different.

Alfred has achieved fame as a rapper, and the Dutch have invited him to perform, but the man in charge of the venue wants Alfred (aka Paper Boi) to wear a Zwarte Piet costume. Earn, the manager, upon seeing what looks like a minstrel’s garb, refuses on Alfred’s behalf.

The Dutch manager extols his culture: “We tolerate people. Not like America.” Later, when Earn and Alfred see a child on the back of a bike in blackface, a local explains it’s “for the children,” but Earn says “it feels like Santa’s slave” and given that the Dutch were colonialists, Earn’s remark is incisive.

At the hotel a bellhop and a maid greet Alfred and Earn in blackface, and it’s clear that this practice is not just “for the children.” When the two enter the venue for the performance that evening, it is full of fans in blackface. Alfred refuses to perform.

It has to be said that the practice of Zwarte Piet in The Netherlands is controversial. Some people want to keep the tradition but sidestep its problematic nature. They propose calling him “Sooty Piet” or “Chimney Piet,” blaming his swarthy skin on having slid down a lot of chimneys. Others want to banish the practice of Zwarte Piet entirely, but others still staunchly defend the tradition.

I reflect back on the episode and the Dutch manager’s words to Earn: “We tolerate people. Not like America.”  One has to wonder which people and under what circumstances.

Joan Zwagerman is mostly Dutch but despises almond paste and the saying, “You’re not much if you’re not Dutch.”