Sinterklaas is Coming...

In the Netherlands, THE holiday for kids is St. Nicholas Day.  Sinterklaas arrives on his white horse, on a barge, via rivers and canals, and since the majority of Holland is below sea level, every town is sure to get a visit from him or one of his helpers.  Kids set out their wooden shoes for presents.

Sinterklaas is accompanied by Black Peter; P-in-C I know, but it’s the custom.  If you’re bad, continually, you get tossed into Peter’s sack and whisked off to Spain.

Especially mid-winter, that never sounded so bad.  The link has a more detailed description, plus the site has many more cultures, but this is the gist of what I was told.

A gift may be accompanied by a poem, written by the giver.  At the office in Rotterdam, my co-workers educated me royally on the “Comedy Roast” aspect of that annoying little tradition.  I spoke Dutch badly, as I do German, Spanish and more and more these days, English, so that was a favorite target.

I don’t remember my own to Tino except for the last stanza:

 

“…But December 5^th,
a Poem with,
a Present, is a BITCH.”

So imagine how tickled I was this morning, December 5^th, to open an email announcing my Christmas spoof-poem, The Night Before Food Stamps,  had just been published on Yahoo.

Who knew?

My wooden shoes are packed away in Mom’s attic, but I do have a recycled Croc I’m putting out tonight.  I believe.