HOW TO SAVE A LIFE (OR MORE)

Yesterday I celebrated 'Sinterklaas' with my friends.
For those of you who have never heard of him I copied and pasted a translation here:


Sinterklaas (also called Sint Nicolaas, de Goedheiligman or simply de Sint in Dutch [ pronunciation (help·info)]) and Saint Nicolas in French) is a traditional Winter holiday figure in the Netherlands, Belgium, Aruba, Suriname and Netherlands Antilles; he is celebrated annually on Saint Nicholas' eve (5 December) or, in Belgium, on the morning of 6 December. The feast celebrates the name day of Saint Nicholas, patron saint of Amsterdam, children and sailors. He is the basis of the mythical holiday figure of Santa Claus in the United States.

Sinterklaas

Sinterklaas has a long red cape, wears a traditional white bishop's robe and red mitre, and holds a crosier, a long gold-coloured 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 agray horse.

[edit]Zwarte Piet

Sinterklaas and his Black Pete usually carry a bag which contains candy for nice children and aroe, a chimney sweep's broom made of willow branches, used to spank naughty children.Some of the older Sinterklaas 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 Sint Nicolaas' story of saving three young girls from prostitution by tossing golden coins through their window at night to pay their father's debts. They also climb down chimneys to fill the children's shoes with presents, this causes their skin to be black.

Basically, when you're younger you receive gifts from the 'Sint' in your shoe. You put your shoe by the chimney and you sing, hoping that he will hear. He puts a gift in your shoe if you leave a carrot or something he can give to his horse. The horse apparently also rides on the roof, which is really impossible. There are a lot of flaws to the story. It results in a big bag of presents left on the doorstep on the fifth of december. Once you get older the fun of only receiving presents wears off and you start to make gifts for other people.

The standard form is: a poem, a 'suprise' and a gift. The 'suprise' is the most important of the whole evening. You pull names out of a hat and you have to make something creatively for someone else. It somehow has to contain a hobby or characteristic of the person. I pulled my friend Janne and because she wants to go to Med School, I decided to make her cut open the chest of a doll.

I in turn got a huge clock, because I'm known for always being late. All my friends were really creative. We had a great night. After that we watched a movie and sang and played the guitar for a while. Although it's not my favorite event of the year, I had a great time. It was close to beating christmas. ;)

So you might think that Sinterklaas is the most racist event on the planet it also is about giving and even though there's a guy who is a slave for the white guy. It has the spirit that christmas has and everybody works so hard to make something really nice. So in my opinion, that's what it's all about. So I hope I won't lose these friends. They mean the world to me.

HOW TO SAVE A LIFE - THE FRAY