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 5th,
a Poem with,
a Present, is a BITCH.”
a Poem with,
a Present, is a BITCH.”
So
imagine how tickled I was this morning, December 5th, 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.
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