I was sitting in the office this morning, going through my daily routine when suddenly our Office Manager came in and gave everyone candy and “chocolade letters”, right on time for a weekend filled with Sinterklaas activities.

While we all dived into our candy filled package, it sparked a discussion about Sinterklaas and if it is appropriate to have children celebrating this event. The conversation actually started when a colleague of mine told a story about a foreign gentleman that she used to work with at her previous job and how he saw the whole “Sinterklaas” character from the outside.

This guy could not believe that we would let our children be involved with a celebration that depicts a white man who is in control of a big number of black, slave-like employees. My colleague had argued the point to him that there was nothing racist and that the helpers were only dark because they went down chimneys and got the coal all over their bodies. She also added that these helpers are not slaves, but merely aides that help to spread the presents because they are young and therefore they are able to move around faster, to deliver presents faster and also to entertain children with tricks, gymnastics and dancing, things that the older “Sinterklaas” obviously can’t do.

The explanation did not change the man’s view and he still saw it as a pretty racist happening and something that children should not be involved with. We kept kicking this topic around in the office and we pretty much agreed that people are making too big of a deal about this and that they are failing to see what Sinterklaas really is about.

I immediately thought that it would be a great topic for my latest Meet Curacao article and how ironic was it then this morning to see Marlous’ article where she brilliantly tackled that issue. She basically makes the same point that I wanted to make but I do want to expand a little bit on it.

When I was a kid, I did not see racism when I looked at Sinterklaas and that’s because children DO NOT think like this. An innocent child does not see the black/white/slave/owner relationships that the politically correct are trying to portray.

Kids see only two things when it comes to Sinterklaas and those are presents and punishment (and not black or white). As kids, we are told that Sinterklaas is 500 years old and that he lives in Spain with his helpers. His helpers are black because they spend a lot of time in the sun (therefore they get a darker color) and because they slide through chimneys and get coal on their faces and body. As kids, we totally believe this because the same thing happens to Tom in those Tom & Jerry cartoons.

We’re also told that Sinterklaas keeps track of every child during the entire year and that if they are bad, that he’ll take them back to Spain for punishment. However, if they are good, he’ll reward them with presents, presents that he’ll bring personally to your house while you are sleeping at night.
NONE of this is weird to children. They don’t care how that man can keep track of all these names and addresses. They don’t care how he can walk with his horse on your roof. They don’t care that he has a key to everyone’s house. They don’t care that no one sees them when they’re delivering the presents. They don’t care how he gets into the house. They don’t care why his face is black. They don’t care if it’s possible or not for the old man to be 500 years old.

There are times here on the island where 3 or 4 Sinterklaas cars will converge on the same intersection. One Sinterklaas car while drive by and 3 minutes later another one will pass in a different car with different Zwarte Pieten.

While something like this should raise a flag, kids do not care. In their world, everything’s possible. That’s why it’s so great to be a kid. Imagination runs wild, possibilities are endless and when it comes down to the whole Sinterklaas experience, they just want gifts and they want to avoid being taken to Spain in a brown bag.

Sinterklaas could have been a big, green Ogre like Shrek and Zwarte Piet could have been a time traveling ninja with 8 arms and they would still believe it BECAUSE THEY ARE INNOCENT CHILDREN.
Mentioning “racist” relationships serves no purpose here. It only brings a very ugly subject into a world where it does not exist, an innocent world where children just want to play and have fun. I may be going out on a limb here but I’m pretty positive that no child that celebrated Sinterklaas will grow up thinking that a rich, white man should have “black”, slave like helpers. It just does not work like that.

If you say that you don’t want to celebrate Sinterklaas with your children because you are “lying” to them about a fictional character that tries to scare them into good behavior, I might see your point. But making up a story that they went through a rainbow just for the sake of not having a black/white situation is just absurd, especially when there was nothing wrong to begin with.