The Saint Who Arrives by Boat
This is a story by our Storykeeper Erika Caballero.
Every November a bishop in a red mitre sails into Amsterdam, and the city goes down to the water to meet him. Children sit on their parents' shoulders along the quays, brass bands play songs every Dutch adult still knows by heart, and the shop windows fill with chocolate letters. Long before Santa Claus took over the world's Christmas, the Netherlands was welcoming Sinterklaas. It still does, with more ceremony than most travellers expect.
A bishop from the Mediterranean
The story begins far from the canals, in Myra, a port town on the southern coast of what is now Turkey. Its fourth century bishop, Nicholas, left behind a reputation for generosity given in secret. The best known legend has him dropping bags of gold through the window of a poor man's house at night, so that the man's three daughters could marry. Over the following centuries his cult travelled along the trade routes of Europe, and he became the patron saint of children, of sailors and of merchants.
That last pair explains a great deal. A city of sailors and merchants had every reason to adopt him, and Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of Amsterdam. The basilica that faces travellers as they step out of Centraal Station carries his name. Erika likes to begin there, because the building makes the point before anyone says a word. The saint arrives by water because Amsterdam always did.
Why he comes by steamboat
According to the tradition, Sinterklaas lives in Spain and sails north each autumn with a boat full of presents and a grey horse that rides across the rooftops at night. Much of this version took shape in 1850, in a picture book by an Amsterdam schoolteacher, Jan Schenkman, who put the saint on a steamboat, the most modern way to travel at the time. The boat has been steaming in ever since.
Amsterdam holds its own arrival in the middle of November. The boat comes in along the water, Sinterklaas steps ashore on his horse, and a parade carries him through the historic centre while the city lines the streets. For a few hours the whole of Amsterdam behaves like a village.
A shoe by the door, and a poem on 5 December
From the day he arrives, children leave a shoe by the fireplace or the front door before bed, often with a carrot or a little hay for the horse. In the morning there might be a chocolate letter inside, or a handful of pepernoten, the small spiced biscuits that appear in every shop in November.
The heart of the season is pakjesavond, the evening of parcels, on 5 December, the eve of the saint's feast day. Families gather, and every present comes with a poem written for the person receiving it, signed by Sinterklaas and usually teasing them, kindly, about the year they have had. Many families also make a surprise, a homemade disguise for the gift that can take days of cardboard and glue. Erika's favourite detail is the poem. It is Dutch directness in rhyme, a once a year licence to tell someone the truth, as long as it scans.
A painter who caught the morning after
The Rijksmuseum keeps the best portrait of the tradition, and it is three and a half centuries old. Jan Steen's The Feast of Saint Nicholas, painted around 1665, shows a family on the morning after. A little girl clutches her new doll, her brother cries because his shoe holds only a birch rod, and the grown ups barely hide their laughter.
What makes the painting remarkable is its date. After the Reformation, Protestant ministers and city authorities tried more than once to stop the feast, which they saw as a Catholic leftover. The Dutch kept it anyway, at home, behind the front door, and Steen painted it for buyers who clearly enjoyed it. Erika tells this story standing in front of the canvas, because it connects to something travellers see everywhere in this country. The Netherlands has a long habit of tolerating in private what it officially disapproves of, and Sinterklaas survived the seventeenth century that way.
From Amsterdam to New York
When the Dutch founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan, they brought their saints with them, and Sinterklaas is generally credited as the origin of the name Santa Claus. Historians still debate how widely the feast was actually celebrated in the colony. What is certain is that in 1809 Washington Irving gave Saint Nicholas a starring role in his satirical history of Dutch New York, and over the following decades a poem and a cartoonist turned him into the bearded man in a sleigh the world knows today. The bishop on the steamboat stayed home and kept his mitre.
OUR WAY OF DOING THINGS...
Our Storykeepers turn a museum into a story your clients will retell forever. The painter, the history few people know, the room to linger in, the dot that connects the history with the now. Art, told by people who love it and know how to make it fun. In November that means a walk that starts at the Basilica of Saint Nicholas by Centraal Station, follows the saint's route along the water and through the old centre, stops at a bakery for warm speculaas and at a chocolatier for a letter with the right initial, and ends in front of Jan Steen at the Rijksmuseum, where a 360 year old family explains how the Dutch keep a tradition alive.
Good to know for travel advisors
The Amsterdam arrival takes place in mid November, and the exact date is announced each autumn. The streets along the route get crowded, so we plan viewing spots in advance for families travelling with children. Pakjesavond on 5 December is a family evening at home, which makes the weeks before it the best time to see the tradition in public, in the shop windows, the bakeries and the markets.
The season overlaps with an exceptional winter in the city. The Amsterdam Light Festival switches on its artworks along the canals from 26 November, best seen from a private boat over dinner served by three chefs. Yayoi Kusama at the Stedelijk and Willem de Kooning at the Rijksmuseum both run until 17 January, and Chez Matisse at H'ART Museum on the Amstel until 14 February.
Santa Claus crosses the sky once a year. In Amsterdam, his oldest version still arrives by boat, and the city still goes down to the water to meet him.
