{"id":8247,"date":"2014-12-10T12:30:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T12:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/wordpress72\/?page_id=11088"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:22:27","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:22:27","slug":"sinterklaas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2014\/12\/10\/sinterklaas\/","title":{"rendered":"Sinterklaas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gifts, candy and coziness: How did internationals celebrate Sinterklaas?<\/h2>\n

Last Friday night, on December the 5th, many Dutch families got together to celebrate the traditional holiday of Sinterklaas, which involves candy, presents and poems. Did the many international students on the Erasmus University celebrate it as well, and is there also a similar holiday in their home countries?<\/strong> <\/p>\n

Natalie Bencurova (24), Master student Marketing from Slovakia\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/h3>\n

\u201cI stayed at home in Rotterdam during Sinterklaas, and had a nice evening together with my roommates and Dutch landlords. They told us all about your traditions and sang several Sinterklaas songs, but I was of course unable to sing along with them. It was fun, however, just like the typically Dutch goodies were. Kruidnoten are delicious, just as Taai-Taai \u2013 did I pronounce that right? \u2013 which was quite hard to chew. We stuck to candy and didn\u2019t buy gifts, student life is already expensive enough as it is. I really enjoyed celebrating Sinterklaas, it is familiar from my home country, where we celebrate the birthday of Saint Nicholas on the 6th of November. It\u2019s a really nice piece of culture, getting cosy and eating sweets with your loved ones is what the winter holiday season is all about.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

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Kathi Eicke (left) & Saskia Sch\u00e4fer (both 25 years old), Master students International Management from Germany <\/h3>\n

Kathi: \u201cThis year I didn\u2019t celebrate Sinterklaas in the Netherlands, but I did several teams in previous years during my Bachelor, so I know a lot about it. I even wrote a poem in Dutch, and people understood it quite well! In Germany, the 5th of December is only a warm-up for Weihnachten (the German name for Christmas). We only get some candy and mandarins from Nikolaus, but we save the real presents for Christmas. Therefore, when you put your shoe beneath the chimney, you also have to put in your wish list in it, so that Nikolaus can give it to Santa Claus. It\u2019s strange and funny to see that for a lot of Dutch people, Sinterklaas is a bigger, even more important holiday than Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

Saskia: \u201cThere are quite a few similarities between the Dutch and German traditions, it\u2019s both on December 5th, and there is a lot of candy involved. The differences are quite apparent as well: we don\u2019t really get any presents, and in Germany, the helper of Nikolaus isn\u2019t a funny, jolly black guy like he is over here. Instead, he\u2019s mean and punishes you when you\u2019ve been bad. I wasn\u2019t in Rotterdam last weekend, so me and my friends didn\u2019t really do anything about Sinterklaas either. The only thing we did is eat a lot of sweets, mostly kruidnoten covered in chocolate. Almost everyone thinks the white ones are most delicious, so if you don\u2019t watch out, they\u2019re gone in no time!\u201d <\/p>\n

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Laci Kobulsky (25), Master student Marketing from Slovakia\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/h3>\n

\u201cI celebrated Sinterklaas in Utrecht with friends, and I was the only non-Dutchie. The poems were all in Dutch, so I didn\u2019t understand much of it. We bought each other presents, but since we\u2019re obviously all poor students, there was a limit of 5 euros. It was mostly about eating candy and having drinks while we wore Sinterklaas hats. Unfortunately, Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet couldn\u2019t join us themselves. I heard there\u2019s a heated discussion about the allegedly racist character of Zwarte Piet in the Netherlands, which surprises me. He\u2019s happy and enjoys doing his job, and he happens to be black, what\u2019s racist about that? I wish his helper was like that in Slovakia, where we also celebrate the holiday of Saint Nicholas. Unlike the jolly, friendly guy that accompanies your Sinterklaas, his Slovakian assistant punishes you when you\u2019ve been bad by giving you onions and potatoes instead of candy. You guys are lucky not to have that!\u201d MvS <\/p>\n

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