Saturday, December 27, 2008
Cevapcici western
There was a land
A land of champions
A land called Yugoslavia
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boys
And god I know I'm one
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
I've lost my soul, on glory alleluyah
Down in Yugoslavia
Land of Champions, Magnifico
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Sinterklaas, episode III: Revenge of de Sint
So this is Christmas.
And it's then normal ending for this esalogy of Sinterklaas to see what went wrong when Sinterklaas crossed the Ocean and went to America.
In fact the figure of the Santa Claus is heavily based on the character of Saint Nicholas, and especially in his Dutch version Sinterklaas.
History say that when they went to America, Dutch conquerors and settlers brought with them their traditions and habits, and within them, Sinterklaas.
Then, during the American War of Independence, the inhabitants of New York City, the former Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, reinvented their Sinterklaas tradition, as Saint Nicholas was a symbol of the city's non-English past.
The name itself of Santa Claus is supposedly derived from the old Dutch form Sinte Klaas.
Despite the fact that this historical reconstruction is not supported by all the experts, it is supported by me (and many others).
But of course also the traditionally Christian Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas, is in turn a clone (as all he Christian characters I may say).
The features of Saint Nicholas, a greek bishop pretty popular in Germanic Countries, is in fact molded from the casting of Wotan, the Germanic version of the chief god in Norse paganism Odin.
Odin, as his alter ego Sinterklaas, is often depicted as a old man, with a long beard, a hat and a stick in the hand.
He's ridings his eight-legged white horse Sleipnir, a grand-grandfather of het wit paard van Sinterklaas.
Also the character of Zwarte Piet, Sinterklaas' helper, in the Medioeval traditios was bearing a lot of similarities in role with Odin's ravens Hugin and Munin.
Finally, late Roman historians, such as Tacitus, used to refer to Odin by using the name of Mercury since they shared features and roles.
Ergo: Ermes is Santa Claus.
(This could explain my childish confusion in understanding the meaning of Santa Claus.)
Friday, December 19, 2008
Sinterklaas, episode II: The attack of the Piets
As I said in the previous post of mine, the description of Zwarte Piet, the companion of Sinterklaas, as a moorish slave from Spain freed by the Saint is very shaky. And even more shaky is the more politically correct portray of Sinterklaas' helper as a chimneysweep from a Southern Country that decided to follow the Sint because of gratitude.
The truth is that, according to myths from the 18th century, Saint Nicholas operates in the companionship of a devil. It is said in fact that on Saint Nicholas Eve the Saint fought the devil and triumphed over it (him?), and eventually enslaved it.
In Holland the figure of the devil was softened into less strong appearances of a moorish kid. But in other Countries in Europe, where Saint Nicholas is also warshipped, some features of the devilish nature of the Saint's helper still remain.
Saint Nicholas is celebrated mainly in the Lower Countries, but it is also very important in most of Central Europe, as well as his dark companions.
In the North of Germany, Sinterklaas helper is called Knecht Ruprecht, or servant Ruprecht. As in Holland they look like black or moorish people and they gave up their devilish appearances.
But in the South of Germany, as well as in Austra, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia and even in the north mountainous part of our region in Italy, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Sinterklaas helper are much like devilish incubi figures, called Krampus. In those areas, young men dress up as the Krampus in the first two weeks of December and roam the streets frightening children and young ladies with rusty chains and bells.
Krampus usually wear wooden masks with huge horns, and sheep skin.
(Present idea: I'd really like to receive a Krampus mask, so if someone needs ideas for a Christmas present for me, just consider this.)
Similar to Krampus are the Bavarian and Styrian Klaubauf, while Pelzebock are more human like, as well as the Pelznickel, Belzeniggl, the American Belsnickel, the Swiss Schmutzli, Rumpelklas, Bellzebub, Hans Muff, Drapp or Buzebergt, and the France Hanstrapp and Le Père Fouettard.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Women in the Netherlands - what they think
After my old (and very succesful) post about the women in the Nederlands, and more specificaly, on the marvellous invention of the plastuit, here I am again, after a Women Lunch, a good occasion to see and to hear about the reality of women in the Netherlands (and actually, all over Europe and beyond).
The idea started by two women researchers in our institute that wanted to share their experience with the younger girls in the same field and have some feedback on how life's going. I am always been very committed to these kind of subjects, as on one side I don't understand how it is possible that among all the discriminations that the human being has done during history, the one on women is the most prolonged and fundamental one, that has held strongly along centuries, that exists in every culture, north and south, east and west, no matter which religion, no matter in which time it is, the discrimination on women has always been present. On the other hand, it is also clear that it is the discrimination that has been most accepted by the victim herself. Many women not only accept it, but are actually proud of being not considered at the same level as men. Well, the discussion of today was much more practical (being Dutch, we may say :-) ) and it was focused mostly on how the society helps women with a family and how it is accepted to have women in high position in a company or in science. Well, I heard a lot of complaints indeed! When I said that surely The Netherlands is not the top, but is not so bad either, I have been answered that statistics shows that women in the Netherlands works less than in the rest of Europe. So I have checked on internet, and what I found is that here 75% of the women are working part time, against the 31% of the European average. Well, it is true that probably the tradition is such that women are more likely than men to stay at home to take care of the children and the house, but if you look more carefully, also the percentage of men having a part time job in The Netherlands is way bigger then the European average. In practice, people work less, because a part time salary is very often enough to have a nice life. Well, one can argue that is often not a choice because there is a lack of childcare, and that's true, but is also true that having a part time job is not a bad thing by definition. Also because part time is not defined. Some people work at 50%, some people at 90% of the full time. The average is around 80%. And often it is for a nice and managerial kind of job. Also, I think that the main reason why in Holland you see so many women discriminations or related problems, it is because women are free to talk about it, they want to express it. I think the number of housewives in Italy is just scary, and of course all these women staying at home, claiming that taking care of the house is just as any other job, and chit-chatting with ladies friends agains men and their housband is not the right mood to fight against male chauvinism. Actually it is just a good reason to become even more chauvinist. At the end The Netherlands is a country that has chosen as main value the eguality among people, and is one of the main supporters of the CEDAW ( Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women) so I think that it may look a bit paradoxal, but the fact we can complain so much about the situation of women in the Netherlands is actually a sign of a better position of the women here then in other places. It is nevertheless true that everywhere, we are very very far from reaching the same rights and the same treatment then our male collegues, and even if it may be not very useful, it is always good to talk about that and let people reflect about this.
Sinterklaas, episode I: The Zwarte Piet menace
Traditions in Holland say Sinterklaas comes from Spain, and they are supported by facts: every year a dutch TV troupe films the departure of Sinterklaas and his helper Zwarte Piet from Spain (as you can see in the picture Eleonora took in Madrid two yers ago) and after a couple of weeks his arrival in Amsterdam by steamboat is greeted by many dutchmen.
Traditions today say that when in Spain, Sinterklaas freed a young moor slave sentenced to death and after that he became his little helper. A even more politically correct view teach that the dark skin of Piet comes from his job as a chimneysweep. This is supported by his clothes which remind the Italian chimneysweep's costume.
But of course the origin is another: in Christian traditions Saint Nicholas was in fact said to work with the devil himself (he's said to have enslaved the devil), and how's the devil looking?
Well, dark skinned of course.
And when this XIX century picture became too racist Zwarte Piet became "just a young slave from a non better specified South, freed by the Sint".
He's supposed to help Sinterklaas to bring presents to the good children, and to punish the bad ones.
Parents use to tell their children that if they have been good, Zwarte Piet will bring them gifts and sweets, but if they have been bad, Piet will catch them, stuff them in his huge dufflebag and send them away to Spain as punishment.
This is sort of funny: what kind of menace is to being send to Spain???
It's even more ironic if you think that Spain is nowadays the main holiday country for dutch people!
But this is something that often sounds weird to me.
The way dutch children are punished if they were bad is pretty different from what we're used to in Italy.
Another typical punishment is to force them to eat spruitjes, Brussels sprouts. This is understandable (even if I love Brussels sprouts), but the funny thing is that if they were good they will be allowed, as reward, to eat spinaches!
There is in fact a way of saying here to incourage kids, which is:
En je zult spinazie etenwhic translates as: "[if you are good] you'll eat spinaches".
This doesn't have much to do with Sinterklaas, but I like it because it's a sort of parody of another saying: "if you keep going fine, you'll become like Spinoza".
Spinoza and spinache in Dutch sound more or less the same, so they just switched to the funny version.
Have I been heavy enough? Good...
Monday, December 15, 2008
Sinterklaas, episode VI: The return of De Sint
One of the recent hit from the dutch band Bløf sings Oktober is de wreedste maand, October is the cruelest month.
Despite this, Autumn is actually one of the best season in Holland.
"It is in Autumn that Amsterdam feels like at home" as one of the main critic of our modern society had to say.
The proof of this is that the only remarkable festivity in the Dutch tradition is Sinterklaas, at the apogee of Autumn.
Moreover this is the only period in which The Netherlands offer some good stuff to eat (or some eatable stuff for good), mainly candies and sweets.
There are in fact a lot of typical Autumn sweets sold only in this period and they make the athmosphere pretty warm and Christmas-like. So yes, this is definitely the best period to visit Holland (this, and the Koninginnedag, of course).
The main sweet of the Sinterklaas period are the Chocoladeletteres: thick alphabeth letters made of chocolate. Every kid gets usually the first letter of his name, or a neutral S (for Sinterklaas) or P (for Zwarte Piet). In smaller letters, such as Js or Is, the thickness of the chocolate layer is larger, so to compensate the amount of choc-ness with bigger letters such as Ms.
Then there all kind of other candies and biscuits:
- speculaas, baked cookies with a cinnamon flavour, with some figures stamped on the rectangular front side;
- kruidnoten, small round cookies made from the same dough as the speculaas, they exist also with a chocolate shell;
- pepernooten, not to confuse with pepernoten, they are instead made of rye. They are traditionally scatterd around to children together with coins or candies;
- marzipan! This is of course my favourite! And after last year's 2kg marzipan pig-head Eleonora bought me, this year this became a tradition and I got another one (but bigger, tastier and marzipaner)!
Eet smakelijk!
Friday, December 12, 2008
Sinterklaas, episode V: De Sint strikes back
The main aspect of the Pakjesavond, the evening of December 5th when Sinterklaas brings presents to Dutch children, is of course receiving presents.
Usually the kids find their presents the morning after, left by Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet.
The presents are accompainied by a simple poem, called Sinterklaasgedicht, that says something about the behaviour of the child during the past year and it gives some hints to the nature of the present.
When children grow older and they quit believing in Sinterklaas, the tradition of the Pakjesavond resists and it becomes a party within friends where everybody brings a present for another person.
Usually people draw a lottery (lootje) and they pick the name of the person they will but a small present.
They also write a poem to accompain to present. Usually these poems are more ironic and teasing to the person who receives the present.
In this last case, gifts are usually creatively wrapped in weird shaped boxes the "children" have to make by themselves. Funny situations usually come out also from the un-wrapping procedure, since all kind of tricks and jokes may be used.
Sticky situations may arise: common ingredients for the filling of the gift-box may be saw dust, syrup, hair gel and cotton balls, news paper and peanut butter...
Someone told me that's also traditional to "wrap" the present within a sticky dough made of gingerbread and water and that's what I've done this year for the present I made.
So yes, we had our Sinterklaas dinner with presents, poems and all the other things and it was pretty funny (it was my first Sinterklaas in Holland, since the last two years I was defrosting in the US).
(Even if you know I'm kind of annoying about traditions.)
Saturday, December 06, 2008
Sinterklaas
Yesterday morning I woke up a bit late (even compared to average Saturdays standards).
The reason for that was the happening of the previous evening: sinterklaasavond.
Sinterklaasavond, or pakjesavond which tranlates as "presents' evening", is the main festivity in the dutch calendar and it's celebrated every year on December 5th, Saint Nicholas' eve.
Saint Nicholas, or Sinterklaas in dutch, was a Greek bishop, patron saint of children. He's celebrated in mostly all the Countries in central and eastern Europe, as well as in the most extreme eastern outposts of Italy: Trieste and Monfalcone.
He's an old guy dressed like a bishop and, in the dutch tradition, he's supposingly coming from Spain every year, riding a white horse (het Paard van Sinterklaas) and followed by his personal helper Zwarte Piet, or Black Peter, a Moorish kid that stories tell Sinterklaas resqued from prison and now, in sign of gratitude, helps him in delivering presents to children.
Sinterklaasavond in The Netherlands is a holiday especially for children, and at this time they are supposed to get presents if they were good in the past year. It's in fact Sinterklaas that brings presents in The Netherlands, not Santa Claus, la Befana (which I discover just now it's a peculiar character of Italy only), the Three Kings, any kind of italian Madonna or Child Jesus (as my grandmother used to tell me. I have to admit this separations of roles confused me a bit when I was young).
There are a lot of cooking traditions, funny ways of wrapping the presents and to write the cards, but I will talk about this later on.
(Or you can check on Wikipedia.)
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