Sinterklaas 2012: Pakjesavond

Sinterklaas season ended tonight with "Present Evening" - my very literal translation of the Dutch name for 5 December. I've written about the Sinterklaas story before (in 2011 and 2008). It's a topic that keeps coming back for me. Nowaday, as a parent and not a cultural critic, Sinterklaas is starting to feel like fun little holiday.

It starts with Sinterklaas' arrival from Spain by boat in mid-November. While he is in Holland, children can "set" or put out their shoes at night and receive a small present in the morning. Each family develops their own traditions, but setting shoes on weekends and Wednesdays are a popular choice. When they set a shoe at night, children leave food for his horse - carrots, hay, water - and a gift for Sinterklaas - a drawing or a song - in exchange for their gift. In the morning, children wake up to find a small toy and a treat (mandarin, walnuts, cookies, candy, chocolate) in their shoe. They may also find evidence that Piets (Sinterklaas's helpers) have been to visit - the children's toys played with and left out or pepernoten cookies tossed around the room. Pepernoten (pepper nuts) are little spice cookies about the size of the tip of your thumb. Piets carry them by the bag full and give them to kids throughout the Sinterklaas season.

Present Evening is the climax of the Sinterklaas season. The story goes that it's Sinterklaas' birthday and he gives out presents. After the family finishes dinner, Piet will knock very loudly on the door and toss a handful of pepernoten into the room. He doesn't show himself, though, because he has too much work to do. By the time the children get to the open front door to look for him, he's gone. If they've been good, Piet will have left a bag of gifts behind. After that it's all fun and games unwrapping gifts, eating more pepernoten, and staying up too late. Peanut's school isn't starting until after lunch tomorrow morning so that kids can sleep in after their big night.

It's been interesting to observe how my own feelings about Sinterklaas have changed over the years. In the beginning I was shocked, then offended, and now I'm probably moving towards mildly amused. The Piets are actually called Zwarte Piets (Black Peters) and run around in black face (see those older posts for more). It's a challenge now to teach my children to use different terms when everyone around them happily talks about Zwarte Piets. But I also see how this is essentially a joyful, light-hearted holiday season that revolves around children and fun. I hope our little ones will have wonderful memories of Sinterklaas when they grow up. And that they will one day celebrate a Sinterklaas with Piets. Just Piet.

Weekend: Skyscrapers!

The tall ships were in Chicago this weekend, so we went to take a look. Apparently a good number of other folks had the same idea, because Navy Pier was packed! Being the kind of girl who is still amazed by crowds and adjusting to life back in the US, it was a bit overwhelming. We saw, the Chicago Tribune building with pieces of stone from all over the world, some ships, a Dutch family that moved to Chicago last week, tables (and then trash cans) overflowing with fast food, Forrest Gump sitting on a bench (outside of chain restaurant with a name from the film), and a macaroni and cheese sculpture, to name a few.

These got me thinking again about some of the things that seem to keep coming up since we've moved back. One is the commercialism. Everything seems to be branded or franchised. Shopping is either the focus or incorporated into everything I've seen so far. The International Fair at Millennium Park was basically a set of booths selling "ethnic" items. These included the Jordanian tent selling sculpture "made in Jerusalem." Isn't Jerusalem in Israel? Guess it sells. To be fair, things aren't exactly better in other parts of the world. Somehow, it feels more overwhelming to me here.

Another thing that's catching my attention is what people eat while they're out. We've been pretty active the past few weeks and had a number of lunches out. As much as possible, I try to plan ahead and take. That means a lot of sandwiches and fruit or some version of easy to carry food made at home and transported in reusable containers. We drink tap water out of reused bottles. On other tables, though, there is a lot of fast food. Brought food is often just a packaged as bought food. Snack packages, juice boxes, and sodas. In other words, there's a food paradigm that's geared towards quick, convenient, and packaged. Why does it seem like a surprise? Maybe five years of working with colleagues where almost everyone almost always brought their lunch. That lunch was usually two or three sandwiches of the brown bread-butter-cheese/ham(rarely both)-brown bread variety. To drink: coffee, tea, or water. At work events, same sandwiches but they offered milk or orange juice to drink - a treat! Essentially, the norm was basic and kind of boring, but healthy. What I'm seeing while we're out is mainly reinforcing my efforts to keep us eating healthy and with as little waste as we can manage.

Our outing (yes, that's what I started in on) ended on a very positive note. Since we didn't end up buying tickets for the tall ships show, we decided to take the water taxi from Navy Pier to Michigan Avenue to save ourselves a bit of the walk. The view was grand and the Peanut loved the ride. Unfortunately, they turned off the fountain just before we got to go under it, but that would have been even more fun. All in all, a great adventure day.

Nurses, Moms, and Culture?

The thing about having a baby is that in addition to the getting big and having to buy get the house ready (read: buy bunches of stuff), there is a lot to learn. In addition to books, here in Holland, information evenings are the way a lot of this information is transmitted. Of course, they don’t do many (any) in July or the beginning of August on account of summer vacation and if you’re not Dutch, you don’t think about these things! So, by the time it was time for us to start attending these things, we had to wait six weeks. But we’ve done well and gone to a couple so far. Imagine a room full of a hundred pregnant ladies and their partners. It’s a bit overwhelming.

This week, we attended an information evening at the hospital where our baby will probably be born. The "probably" because there seem to be no absolutes with births, not because of the hospital. One of the interesting things about giving birth in a hospital here is that their policy is to get you home ASAP. If you have a normal birth, that’s usually within two hours of baby being born. They say it’s because you’re so pumped up on adrenaline at that point that going home is easier to manage than after you’ve calmed down, slept a bit, etc.

One pregnant lady asked the nurses giving the presentation for advice about being sent home possibly in the middle of the night with a baby if the baby had problems breast feeding. The answer was a fairly abrupt version of, "Suck it up, you'll be fine, and baby will be fine without food for a night." Needless to say, the mom didn't look too reassured. I could only laugh to myself. What an answer to give a nervous new mom! No alternatives, no suggestions, just a fairly abrupt “stop fussing” and “next question.”

So my question is this: is this a nurse thing or a Dutch thing? I’m tempted to think it’s a nurse thing. After all, these ladies have seen it all. If you’ve been a nurse on a maternity ward for 20 or 25 years, the idea of a healthy mom and baby going home and worrying probably seems pretty silly. You’re healthy! Be happy, go home, enjoy. Any of the problems you run into are minor and can be taken care of later. No danger.

Clearly, this isn’t the way a potential new mom thinks. Of this, I can speak from experience. My latest panic is going to the grocery store for the first time with our baby. Insignificant in the scope of life, I’m sure, but in my mind: huge. More than anything, this is a story of how difficult it can be to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, especially the shoes of someone younger or less experienced than we are. I may teach, but do I really remember what it was like to be a 20 year-old study abroad student? This is something other than empathy or compassion, it’s understanding and responding to another human being’s frame of reference. Hopefully we all know someone who can do this. But learning it… that’s a real challenge!