Sinterklaas evening & outfit

In the Netherlands children do not get their presents form Santa Claus but from Sinterklaas. Many mistake him for the Dutch Santa and automatically think it is part of Christmas. Well it certainly is NOT!

The week before we did meet a Sinterklaas/Nikolaus at a German Christmas market though. Ofcourse a picture had to be taken:

Sinterklaas is the Dutch name for Saint Nicolas, bishop of Myra. His dying day on the 6th of December has been celebrated  in the Netherlands and Belgium either on the morning of the 6th or the evening of the 5th, for hundreds of years (long befor Santa was 'born'). The oldest tradition is that of placing a shoe under the chimney where good children will find somehting sweet and bad children a bag of salt.

A more modern tradition is that of Sinterklaas evening, where people bring eachother gifts and unwrap them together.

 

This year I celebrated Sinterklaas with my friends from Club Interbellum. The gifts we brought were either from the interwar period or old-fashioned in style. Everyone made such an effort, we ended up with 4 to 5 gifts each.

 

Martine helped me to prepare my house for 15 guests. At the end they came later than expected and we got bored....

I had all the people stacked into my little living room but it was a lot of fun. 

 

 

Steve even dressed up as Sinterklaas ;)

 

Here I'm unwrapping a gift.

 

 

It was also my friend Myrtle's birthday, so ofcourse she got some special gifts :)

 

Marinka got a book with the title: the Terrorists, sounds modern, but it isn't, very interesting....

 

 

These were the lovely gifts I got. Chair included!

 

All my guests:

 

The ladies with Sinterklaas:

 

 

And the gentlemen with drinks ;)

 

Now about my outfit: I wore a green dress from the 1940's. It's in a rayon crepe with som amazing details like beading, shirring and a double buckle on the belt.  As Sinterklaas is a homely festivity a long evening dress would not have been appropriate.

 

 

To add to the homely feel I added a crochet cardigan/jacket. But more about were it came from in my next post!

 

 

That's it for now! I'll be back with some family history and I'll try to get to doing a Christmas outfits post somewhere next week.

 

Birthe