Sints, Piets, and Mutant Christmas trees

So I was cruising for scholarships on Fastweb.com when I found this link to the National Christmas Tree Association, which is offering 5,000-10,000 dollars (and a free trip to Orlando! For four!) to people who write essays about how their real (i.e. not artificial) Christmas trees make Christmas really special or something. They appear to be some kind of radical anti-artificial-tree organization; I quote,

"The spirit of Christmas is alive, as long as you believe. The National Christmas Tree Association hopes that children and parents across the country will slow down and spend family time together this year by selecting and decorating a fresh, real Christmas Tree this holiday season. To get you in the spirit, we invite you to play 'Attack of the Mutant Artificial Tree.'"

I got to level 4.

http://www.christmastree.org/home.cfm


OK, Sinterklaas. Sinterklaas lives in Spain for the whole year except for, basically the month of November. His birthday is indeed on December 5, and that's the big night when everybody gets presents, but he arrives in Holland almost a full month earlier so as to generate hype, remind little kids to be good, etc. He brings along with him his African slaves, the Zwarte Pieten (Black Petes); those are the people you see in my photos wearing colorful clothes, hats with feathers, red lipstick, and blackface. Disturbing? Absolutely. American expatriates cringe whenever we see this, but the Dutch have no problem with it. It's just another holiday tradition for them. I guess they don't have the whole history of interracial tension that we have; no minstrelsy tradition here, as far as I know (although I wonder if there are connections between the Piets and the whole Bamboozled phenomenon . . .) Apparently, they tried to introduce orange and blue Piets instead of black ones a few years ago, I guess to sidestep the prickly racial issue, but there was huge public outcry about the government messing with honored Dutch tradition. As far as I can figure, changing Piet's color is like replacing Santa's reindeer with cows or something.

Anyway, Sinterklaas arrives on the"stoomboot" (steamboat in Dutch) in Dutch ports, and then he spends the next four weeks or so touring Holland on a white horse, followed by the Pieten who give everyone papernoten and kruidnoten, which are miniature cookies similar to gingersnaps. All Dutch people get totally into it, too, much more so than Americans and Christmas; e.g. the Dutch media will cover Sinterklaas' activities as if it were real news for the benefit of little Dutch kids. When we went to see his arrival at the port on Saturday, there must have been over a thousand people there to watch him arrive, and the had the Spanish ambassador there to greet him and everything (wonder what HE thought of it all - "Crazy Dutch people!"). Anyway, if you can't tell, I'm kind of buying in on all the hype, so far by learning a bunch of Sinterklaas songs ("Wij zingen en wij springen want wij zijn zo blij . . . "). :)

Those are onions on the herring. It was actually quite tasty.

OK, TASP poll:
Top 5 songs where non-Francophone musicians sing some lyrics in French.

My nominations:
Michelle - the Beatles
Jack Rabbit Slims Twist Contest - Chuck Berry
Rene and Georgette Magritte with their Dog After the War - Paul Simon

Groetjes,

Sam