Sinterklaas!

[gypsy_fyre]

Well, I promised a couple of people I'd update today, but we'll see how much I have to tell that'll interest everybody. I've gotten a lot of new information about my family, which is nice, and I'm making sure to keep note of it for those who want to hear. Thinking of how the Wils' ended up here in Den Haag and the history of our family in the

Comments

[antilera]

Wow! St. Martin's and Sinterklass look like a lot of fun! And very literate. Man, poems and gifts that look like them. I also find it really interesting that Sinterklass is, well, white and all of Renaissance garbed helpers seem to be black?

Are the Wils not originally Dutch? Not that I really know anything about European family histories, but I just assumed people generally stayed in regions. Yeah, I guess I'm pretty ignorant about this sort of thing.

Yay for Dutch roots!

Questions answered

[gypsy_fyre]

You caught that about the helpers, too? Apparently, being PC has little place here, which is actually kind of fun once you're used to it. It makes sense, actually, Sinterklaas is a saint who got that title by travelling to Turkey and back with some of the people he converted. The major character of those converts was Piet (Black Piet) so they keep that as part of the tradition. Actually, I think it's kind of cool, because Piet does a lot of the work, but he's also the one with the candy (and thus largely the favorite with most children!). The reason there are so many now is that Sinterklaas needs a lot of help, so instead of one Zwarte Piet, there are many Piets! And I'll include a picture of my gift and my poem when I have them