by Arnon Grunberg
When I was growing up in Amsterdam in the 1970s, the phenomenon of Santa Claus was
relatively unknown. Christmas was celebrated without Santa and mostly without
gifts. St. Nicholas — Sinterklaas in Dutch — was the man with the presents.
If one had
the good fortune to be Jewish, one received presents not only on Dec. 5, the
eve of Sinterklaas’s name day, but also at Hanukkah. Only in recent years has
Santa Claus, who comes on Dec. 25, made his rise to stardom in Holland, and
today a Dutch child — or a Dutch adult for that matter — no longer has to be
Jewish to cash in twice in December.
 |
| Illustration Yarek Waszul |
Sinterklaas
arrives from Spain by steamboat in late November, travels farther on horseback,
climbs onto roofs and on Dec. 5, known as “Pakjesavond,” drops presents through
the chimney with the help of the Black Petes, a crew of dark-skinned helpers
wearing large earrings who cavort and entertain and, as Dutch parents often
tell their children, owe their blackness to chimney soot.
Black Pete
and Sinterklaas also conspire to form a punitive team. In the traditional
holiday songs, Sinterklaas brings gifts for good boys and girls; naughty
children get a spanking with Black Pete’s bundle of twigs.
I grew up
in a predominantly white neighborhood, and every November, whenever I would
come across someone from Suriname — in those days, most black people in
Amsterdam were from Suriname, a former Dutch colony in South America — I feared
that I had run into a Black Pete in plain clothes.
Until
recently, Black Pete was uncontroversial. Not because the Dutch are
particularly racist, but because Sinterklaas, like the royal family, is sacred
in the Netherlands, perhaps because of a dearth of other, specifically Dutch
traditions. A matter, in other words, of conservatism.
Such
traditions are even more important today, given the view that, in order to
safeguard the Dutch national identity, homegrown culture and folklore must not
be tampered with — a view expressed primarily, though not exclusively, by the
extreme right wing Party for Freedom, run by Geert Wilders.
But just as
the defense of traditions has grown stronger, so has the criticism that Black
Pete is a racist holdover from the Netherlands’s colonial past. In January the
United Nations High Commission for Human Rights sent a letter to the Dutch government
stating that Black Pete perpetuated the image of people of African descent as
second-class citizens and constituted a “living trace of past slavery.”
The Dutch
government responded by saying that it regarded the Sinterklaas tradition as a
children’s celebration, that it was aware of the differences of opinion
concerning Black Pete, but that it was highly committed to combating
discrimination in all forms.
Both
letters received publicity only in October of this year, when the public debate
over Black Pete resurfaced. Emotions
were running so high that a popular singer, Anouk, who is white and had called
for the abolition of Black Pete, received numerous insults and threats via
social media. A plan for a Sinterklaas parade with a proposed compromise, Green
Petes, had to be canceled after threats were made against its planners.
In The
Hague, the seat of government, a demonstration was organized for the
preservation of Black Pete, while a pro-Black Pete Facebook page received two
million likes almost immediately. Even the nation’s highest-circulation
newspaper, De Telegraaf, agreed that the United Nations letter constituted
interference in the Netherlands’s domestic affairs.
In a debate
in Parliament, Mr. Wilders’s party asked the minister of education, culture and
science whether she shared the view held by some that “Dutch traditions” should
be made subordinate to “multicultural drivel.” Not to be outflanked, both Prime
Minister Mark Rutte and the mayor of Amsterdam recently spoke up in defense of
Black Pete, albeit with reservations. Sinterklaas, Mr. Rutte said, would not be
Sinterklaas without Black Pete.
Of course,
there were Dutch people who saw things differently, and there were many with no
opinion either way. Yet the general tenor among the Dutch public was that
“they” should keep their mitts off “our tradition,” an opinion you can hear in
any number of variations on any street corner. By “them” people mean the United
Nations and “unnatural” Dutch citizens, by both birth and naturalization, who
want to put an end to this admittedly dubious tradition.
The Black
Pete debate underscores how deep within the Netherlands’s prosperous and safe
society lies the fear of losing identity, undoubtedly fueled by globalization,
migration and the notion that the European Union is gradually doing away with
the European nation state.
During the
triumphal entry of St. Nicholas into the Netherlands this year, a national
happening whereby a sort of street theater is performed on the children’s
behalf, the Black Petes were in attendance once again, albeit this time with
less ostentatious golden earrings. For security’s sake, the saint himself was
accompanied by armed Petes in bulletproof vests.
The truly
disturbing thing is the aggression conjured up by this public debate, the
thinly disguised xenophobia that roiled to the surface when attempts were made
to make Black Pete less black. A civilized person, after all, could say:
“Personally, I don’t have much of a problem with Black Pete, but if others do,
well, then, why don’t we make him Green Pete or Blue Pete?”
But no. To
my utter amazement, at least two million Dutch people have taken the stance:
“Black Pete, c’est moi.”
Which once
again goes to prove that national identity often boils down to distasteful
folklore.
Arnon Grunberg is the author of the novels
The Jewish Messiah and Tirza. This essay was translated by Sam Garrett from
the Dutch.
[from The New York Times, December 4, 2013]
