Instead of Santa Claus, the Dutch have Sinterklaas. And instead of having reindeer and elves, Sinterklass has "Zwarte Piet" as his helper - which seems entirely WRONG to me, but he's definitely a popular character over here. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinterklaas
During the past week I've seen numerous people around town and in the bar dressed up as Zwarte Piet, which is rather frightening - especially since Zwarte Piet always seems to be wearing red lipstick, for some unknown reason...
At work, one person in our group will apparently be chosen as the recipient of the Sinterklaas gift. I guess the gift is usually something that pokes fun at a person (but only in a good/positive way) and the gift is given with a poem, which the recipient has to read out loud. Last year the recipient of the department gift got a pair of suspenders since he tends to wear his pants too low and his "Deer Isle Smile" (aka, plumbers crack) was showing. He got a full page poem describing how his pants were very fashionable but too low and that old Sint was seeing more than he wanted to. And they gave him a box of chocolates along with the suspenders to help him get fatter so his pants would stay up better. I'm sort of frightened to see who will get the gift at work this year - apparently they tend to give it to foreigners... I seriously hope it is not me...
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1 comment:
Hi Isla,
I never heard of this before, maybe is not bad to be the recipient of attention...
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