Wednesday, December 17, 2008
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...
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1 comment:
Thank you for english correction (shame!)
And I appreciate that you have become to write other episodes. I also notice that you have begun with episode V, VI, and finally the first..It's an elegant parade of style.
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