Santa is Coming to Town (with His Black Slave)

The St. Nicholas Day celebration starts even sooner as the steamboat arrives from Spain (official residence St. Nicholas) to Holland to the cheers of thousands of parents and their excited children awaiting a glimpse of the Sinterklaas (Dutch for Santa Claus) and his side kick servant Black Pete (Zwarte Piet in Dutch).

I was in Holland one weekend not knowing that it was St. Nicholas Day. I saw the thousands of Dutch and foreign onlookers awaiting the arrival of St. Nicholas and then I noticed his helper, an obviously pale Dutch man in black face. Imagine the shock and horror; I was saying internally "This is not happening. For goodness sakes, I'm in one of the most, if not the most, culturally diverse countries in Europe where color and sexuality doesn't seem to take precedence as in other countries". Yet as the poorly made-up minstrel passed me I thought, it is happening, it's real.

I looked around for the reactions of others, a high percentage of which were white Dutch males with their wives and children of color, a reminder of the effects of the Dutch colonial past. Aside from the obvious foreigners in town to capture the sights and sounds of the city, locals were mesmerized and excited to see St. Nicholas on his white horse with his servant (slave).

Black Pete a slave, no can't be. Yes, can be. The Black Pete we see nowadays does not have cocoa or caramel colored skin and is not even of African descent. He (or sometimes she) is a white person with pitch black shoe polish on his face dancing around, schlepping his feet like a fool and speaking poor Dutch in a very slow manner representative of racist visualizations of people of color. His purpose is to scare children in to doing well so St. Nicholas will leave them a nice treat. If the children behave badly, look out because the dark man heavily marketed during the holiday season, will take you away on his ship back to Spain and you'll never see mommy or daddy again. To make matters worse, some children think their black schoolmates will grow up to be Black Pete.

Who is Black Pete?
Around 1850 Black Pete was illustrated as a normal foreigner, around the early 1900s he was presented as the slave or employee to St. Nicholas. So how did Black Pete evolve? There are several theories; the most common is that Black Pete is not Black but an Italian chimney sweep whose face is full of soot and on December 5 leaves bad children twigs in their shoes instead of gifts and candies reserved for good children. Another theory is that St. Nicholas had a companion, the devil. Evil did not prevail and the evil one was shackled and made the slave of St. Nicholas, hence his life-long helper.

The discussion of getting rid of Black Pete or canceling the parades is heated throughout Holland. Some parades have even been canceled due to death threats. We all want children and adults should be able to enjoy the holiday season but without stereotypes.

If the Dutch can build dams and bridges they can break them down too, right? The current Dutch monarchy is the The Dutch Royal House is the House of Orange-Nassau. Why not replace Black Pete with the symbol of Dutch Royalty, an orange?