Sinterklaas is the new black

Santa Claus, Father Christmas, the impersonation of sympathy and generosity, most of the world´s growing population has come to know in over a bit more than a century.

In my early childhood years, I hardly got to know the man and that's because the one and only Sinterklaas persistently pioneered ahead of him every year and did so in a much credible manner.

Who on earth would believe that raindeers pull an one horse open sleigh through the sky and have a chunky man slip through tight chimneys worldwide to place personally selected presents carefully under Christmas trees, all in a single night?

Sinterklaas always recognised  he must arrive weeks ahead of his sacred 6 December in a huge steamship stuffed with commodities and consumables along with hundreds of proud Zwarte Pieten, well organized in different sections to secure the voyage and who all get to work upon arrival in testing and packaging toys, conducting feasibility studies on the inclination of rooftops, monitoring weather predictions and developing alternate entry strategies for homes without chimneys.

I and my fellow childhood community members had weeks to contemplate our behaviour at home and in school and numerous moments of reflections how we should choose to correspond with Sint and his team via the medium of a shoe, incentivated by hope for completion of a wish list or out of fear for being taken to far away Spain.

The organizational philosophy of Sinterklaas was solid and by the time Christmas would arrive for those who believe in celebrating the arrival of Jesus Christ to this world, we would all be unconsciously well prepared to (re-)place our belief in a better intended world in the soon year to come.

Then, we grow up ....

We learn that Spain is actually a pretty nice country, wondering where Zwarte Pieten hang out during summer and what Sinterklaas's bathing suit would look like.

Then we accept that who really once was a bishop in present-day Turkey and did secretly drop candy and coins in shoes left outside the night before, became the sacred patron of Dutch sailors and navigators safeguarding their thrive to reach new lands which they baptised New Amsterdam.

I don't think there is any sign or symbol in present-day Manhattan that could remind habitants or visitors of the connection to Sinterklaas and that is fine.  The English pursued their own (religious) beliefs and arguably still are.

But above all, we learn, experience and internalise at our own individual pace, that receiving is as significant as the act of giving.

For ten years I have had the privilege my children allowed me, to think they believed Sinterklaas to be true and up and running,  blended with south European beliefs surrounding Natal and Dia de los Reyes.  A new chapter commenced.  I can now tell them about dear dedicated friends who impersonated Sinterklaas and borrowed their vessels, year after year, or how once my father presided as Sinterklaas amongst Spanish immigrant children, all wondering why he did not understand Spanish.  Tales about selflessness, friendship, actions over words .....

(many thanks to Sinterklaas himself for sharing the image this year)

In one way I am grateful that a period of make belief has now been replaced by an earthlier yet more intimate reality of giving and receiving and embrace the time ahead in the solid belief that in order to remain vivid traditions too must adapt.  The way I sense it, "my" Sinterklaas tradition is not evaporating, it has now nested and settled and, decorations aside, will be around throughout the entire year.  I guess unconsciously we are just spreading more Sinterklazen into a world of adulthood and that is where the tradition is perhaps all about.

With that being said, I do believe that those adults who seek to protest against Sinterklaas celebrations should be ashamed for introducing racism into an event where genuine people see none and should reconsider their competence for not putting their effort where it is needed.

Á la Croate

Like many from his time, my father always was a man of neck ties.  I do not really recall particularly observing him picking and tying ties peeking within the intimacy of his quarters.  It was just the way he showed up in the morning and the way he withdrew himself at night.  The tie was just always there it seemed to me and to everyone else, I presume.  It was part of him. Hundreds of ties, bought, received, some worne down, stripes, dots, logos tied to the event of the day.  

I have kept most of them, along with the dozens I have collected for myself over time, each and every single one with a story to tell.  

He would have understood the moment I windsored the school tie around my son's neck on the occasion of his personal Forma Professionis Fidel Catholicae, not because of the religious relevance his grandson was about to face but because of the individual statute tied to the tie and the proportional public posture along with it.  There is a moment which cannot be explained when a man stands in front of the mirror, even for a couple of seconds, to measure and glance, not too short, nor too long, before he ties the knot and walks into the day.

Times change and so do ties.  Or rather the use of them.  In the general public eye ties have become a boring or even burdensome symbol of stiffness or perhaps, at present, we are merely emphasising the absence of ties as a proud token of our activeness and need to breath freely, where too large companies and institutions face dress codes as a Gordian Knot, wandering how to deal with individual senses of freedom or expression, whatever that may mean in a workplace.

It was in a store somewhere in Zagreb, not long after the end of the third Balkan Wars, that a proud and independent Croat woman sought to convince me that the neck tie was a Croat invention.  My then still Western skepticism, derived from centuries of misunderstood nationalism amongst the Balkan populations, perceived as outdated at a time when most European countries were ceding sovereignty rather than re-conquering it, did not go unnoticed by the store personnel.  This was a time when nearly every day, Croat cars would hunk throughout the streets carrying Croat flags.

They gave me the entire story and whereas I admit having fact checked, their narrative was good enough for me to include into my own little individual tie ceremony in the morning to remind myself of where we all come from and are still tied to.

It would have been during the last outright wars that stroke Europe before the age of enlightenment would set foot forever, that the fighting skills of a few but fierce group of Croat militia caught the attention of French military, fighting. amongst the already then large European powerhouses, aligning or revolting, but alway faithful to their own beliefs.

These militia distinguished themselves by wearing a scarf knotted around the neck, close to heart.  

No better "man" than the then still ruling Louis XIV to make the neckwear "à la Croate" popular as "cravates" in and around the courts and eventually the streets of Paris and beyond.  

I think I will stick to the origin in my little morning ceremony.