Actually Anna Christmas Countdown Day 1: Explaining Sinterklaas

I’m so exited to finally share with you that I’m doing Blogmas this year! Just a quick explanation: Blogmas is basically posting a blog every day from the 1st to the 24th of December. I called my blogmas, like you can see in the title, Actually Anna Christmas Countdown.

life update

First of all I submitted my master thesis! I’m so incredibly happy that this is (almost) over. My supervisor has to approve it first and I have to present it in front of other students, but after that it’s finally finished. I’m really glad it’s almost over, because it has been a bumpy road! Besides my master thesis university is crazy. Just 3 weeks until the Christmas holidays start and before that we have an exam week. So I’m going to attempt to post everyday, but bare with me if I don’t make it!

Who is Sinterklaas?

I think almost every blogmas post/video/vlog will start with Christmas vibes, but here in The Netherlands we don’t until we’ve celebrated Sinterklaas. I know that most of you (who aren’t Dutch) will think: What is Sinterklaas? Well, it’s a celebrating of Saint Nicolaas the 5th of December. It’s quite an old tradition, where children believe that Sinterklaas and his helpers (pieten) come with a steamship all the way from Spain to our country.

A couple of weeks before his birthday (the 5th of December) he comes with his boat, his helpers and all the gifts for the children towards The Netherlands. All children can put their shoes in front of the fireplace and during the night Sinterklaas will go on the roofs of the houses (together with his horse called Amerigo and his ‘pieten’) to put little gifts inside the shoes of the children. Well, Sinterklaas doesn’t do this himself, because he is really old. His ‘pieten’ will go through the chimneys of the houses and put the gifts inside the shoes.

On the 5th of December it’s Sinterklaas’ birthday and he will go towards every house with a big bag of gifts for all the children. This night is called ‘pakjesavond’ in Dutch, which means something like gift night. This is our little Dutch tradition and maybe they celebrate this also in Belgium (I’m not sure).

Our 5th of December traditions

I’ll do another blogpost about Sinterklaas on the 5th of December and I’ll tell you all about the traditions we have in our family to celebrate this. Just like you might have with Santa there are all kind of variations to celebrate Sinterklaas for the adults who don’t believe in it anymore.

I really hope you liked reading this first day of Actually Anna’s Christmas Countdown! And reading a bit about the Dutch culture and Sinterklaas. See you tomorrow with another blogpost!