Daily Archives: December 5, 2007
5 December – Sinterklaas Day
Today is St. Nicholas day in the Netherlands . St. Nicholas or Sinterklaas as called by the Dutch has been in the Netherlands for a couple of weeks. He and his helpers the ´zwartepiet´ (Black Pete) came by boat all the way from Spain. The zwartepieten carried sacks full of candies, goodies for the children.
On the 5th of December, it´s time for Sinterklaas to go back to Spain. But before that he and the zwartepieten will ´visit´ houses (with kids) at night and leave the gifts in the socks left by the children in the living room. Sometimes Sinterklaas will leave a sack of gifts or in a basket in front of the kids´ house door. He will ring the bell and leave the place immediately so that the kids won´t see he has been there.
But it is not only celebrated by the kids. The youngsters who now have realised the truth existence of Sinterklaas will still celebrate this occassion.
In the organisations, most of the time, someone will organise a Sinterklaas party. Everyone will buy a gift with a minimum price and will prepare a poem which is ´written by´ Sint. Sometimes they put all the gifts on the table and they will get a gift randomly based on their lucky number. Another way is by picking a name first and buy a gift and write a poem special for this lucky person. The whole thing should be a secret. No one knows who gives who something. It is of course from Sint.
In my office, this year we were only with several people, so we made it very simple but we did have fun. Of course not to forget the speculaas.
Another demonstration in Rotterdam
Yes, today Dec 4th, there was another strike happening in this city. Last year while busy with our month-end close, we were entertained by the strike organised by Unilever people, with people talking on a microphone, music loudly played etc in the cold white winter. Yep, that´s their building.
As for this demonstration, we have no idea what was going on.
