Thursday 1 November 2012

Zwarte Piet, Santa’s friendly black-face helper!

At a friend’s house last week, the topic of the Dutch Christmas tradition of Zwarte Piet came up in conversation around the table over apple crumble. For those of you that have never heard of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete in English), he is a traditional Dutch character, who helps Sinterklaas (the Dutch version of Santa Claus) to deliver his presents. He comes out to play on St Nicholas Day on the 5th of December (the 6th in Belgium) accompanying Sinterklaas on his steam boat having travelled from Madrid, Spain. Zwarte Piet serves as either the clown to Sint’s kind but serious old man figure, or the punisher of bad children (Piet will beat you with a stick or kidnap you and take you to Spain if you’re naughty). Zwarte Piet is found in the form of people dressed up in black-face, parading the streets throwing sweets (or candy if we're going to be American about it) for children, and sitting them on their knee to ask what they would like for Christmas.    




My first reaction when I heard this story earlier this year, was simply denial. They CAN’T be pretending to be people of African origin right? They CAN’T be allowing black-face white people to dance around the street and dress up as Sinterklaas‘ slave? They must be some kind of mythical fantasy creature that just happens to also have black skin. They must be supposed to be covered in soot. It must be unrelated.


It’s definitely not unrelated. Google Images told me so in the first hit.


Then came the sinking realisation that this is just abhorrent anachronism. They really do look exactly like they are dressed up as Sinterklaas’ African slave. The phrase “culture shock” is quite appropriate here, but extremely unexpected given the short distance of the bus ride between London and Maastricht, compared with this huge distance between what is culturally acceptable in a cosmopolitan society. My opinion was not reflected around the table however, and a debate ensued as to the origin of Zwarte Piet, and what his black face signifies. So I decided to do a bit of research.


To understand the tradition, we have to look at Santa in his pre-Coca-Cola era. The red coated, jelly-bellied, white-bearded Santa Claus that we now know in the UK and the USA (and lots of other places in the world), is said by some to have originated from the Dutch Sinterklaas, who in turn, originated from the original St Nicholas. St Nicholas was born a 4th century Greek (270-343), the son of wealthy Christian parents. He grew up to become the bishop of Myra in present day Turkey. In Greek folklore, Nicholas is seen as “The Lord of the Sea” and protector of sailors, as he was born in a port city, and apparently spent much time at sea. Legend has it that he was a pretty good guy; he resurrected butchered children, gave some money to a poor man who’s daughters were going to be forced into prostitution, and generally saved children and adults who needed saving - hence he became the Patron Saint of Children. When he died, St Nicholas’ remains were transferred to Bari, which later became part of the Spanish Kingdom of Naples. This is one theory of the creation of the story that Sinterklaas came from Spain, where the religion has historically been a mix of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Sinterklaas was depicted with a “helper” shown as Morisco (or Moorish, meaning Muslim people of mixed Berber and Arab descent, now living chiefly in northwest Africa).






Another theory, is that Santa Claus originated from Scandinavian and Germanic mythology, as an adaptation of the Norse god of thunder, Thor. Thor was the God of peasants and drove a chariot drawn by two white goats named Krakker and Gnasher. He fought the elements of ice and snow, and so his element was fire, represented by the colour red. His main symbol was a hammer, he was a carpenter and was assisted by trained elves. Sounds familiar?

Over time, the Dutch, (most responsible for bringing Santa to America) depict Sinterklaas carrying a book which tells him if the children have been naughty or nice, of course with his assistant, Black Peter, the Dark One or the Dark Helper. In Germany, his assistant is called Knecht Ruprecht, Pelzebock or Hans Trapp (a demon or Satan) who did all the punishing of children for Sinterklaas. He was dark, horned, hairy, and cannibalistic, and came with a rod in his other hand to beat naught children with, not dissimilar to Zwarte Piet's beating sticks. So Santa split into two characters, yet consistently travelled as a team dealing out gifts and retribution. 





Now, there are various confusing explanations of the origins of Zwarte Piet The oldest, is that he symbolizes the two ravens Hugin and Munin who were spies for the Norse (subset of Germanic Paganism) God Odin. In later stories the helper depicts the devil, defeated by either Odin or his helper Nörwi , the black father of the night. Nörwi is usually depicted with the same staff of branches as Zwarte Piet. Another, more modern story is that Saint Nicolas liberated an Ethiopian slave boy called 'Piter' (from Saint Peter) from a Myra market, and the boy was so grateful he decided to stay with Saint Nicolas as a helper.




In 1850, teacher Jan Schenkman (1806–1863) wrote a book, Sint Nicolaas en zijn knecht (Saint Nicholas and His Servant) in which Sinterklaas arrived in The Netherlands by boat. In Schenkman’s version, the Moorish helper was changed to the African “negro helper” Zwarte Piet (Black Peter), who followed Sinterklaas on his rounds.


Lets just look at the name of the book again there, "Saint Nicholas and His Servant". 


Servant. Not "friend", not "helper": servant.






So the confusing modern-day story follows as such: Sinterklaas arrives on his boat from Spain, with his black-face helpers (who may be Moorish, may be the defeated devil, may be African servants), handing out presents to good children, and punishing those who have been naughty by beating (or now just pretending to beat them) with branches. The more politically correct story that was introduced recently is that the faces are “black from the soot”. Quite a jumble of stories going on there.


So back to the evening of apple crumble. We were a fairly international group of mostly German, Dutch and little-old-English-me, and when the subject of Zwarte Piet came up, there seemed to be four main contradictions of opinion.


1. A German person who said that black-face wasn't a big deal in The Netherlands and Germany, and that people aren't offended by it. That St Nicholas historically would have had slaves, so Zwarte Piet was just following an accurate part of the story. White people used to black-face themselves for acting, so what's wrong with doing it for Christmas?


2. A Dutch person who had never made the connection between Zwarte Piet and slavery or black people, (and who would never want to offend a fly, never mind an entire ethnicity of people) and thought that it was just a nice tradition.


3. A Dutch person who says that foreign people coming to the Netherlands don’t understand that the tradition is not racist, it has nothing to do with people of African origin, and nothing to do with slavery. They are black because they fell down the chimney and got covered in soot (as the Zwarte Piet song says).


4. Me, who said Zwarte Piet is clearly now depicted as African ethnicity, has obvious connotations to slavery as Santa’s “helper” and that he has no place in a Christmas celebration in a supposedly cosmopolitan Western country.


Normally I try to be as accommodating as possible when it comes to other’s beliefs and traditions, but if you try to tell me that Zwarte Piet is not now a caricature of an African face, has no resemblance to racial stereotype playing the “helper” of his master and does not offend anyone then YOU ARE WRONG, WRONG, SO FUCKING WRONG.


That is EXACTLY WHAT HE IS! (See my diagram below for further explanation)





I would love to believe that Zwarte Piet is black because of the soot, I think that story is kind of cute that Santa has a helper that gets covered in soot every time he goes down the chimney, but let’s be realistic and look at what’s in front of us. HE HAS DARK BROWN SKIN, PAINTED RED LIPS AND CURLY AFRO HAIR. If it was soot, he would be dusty black, or charcoal black. He’s a sort of dark-chocolate brown. Also, how the hell did his clothes stay so clean?

So why don’t they just start chaining the “Zwarte Piet’s” together in a line for their parade? They can call the chains “just skipping ropes they play with”. They can make them pick some cotton and shine some shoes on their way around and pretend they are just “helping people with friendly services” because saying that black-face is “just soot” is exactly the same thing.

In my opinion, i
t’s one thing to dress up in black-face for a politically incorrect party where everyone knows what they’re getting in for, where people are intentionally pushing the boundaries, and also turning up as paedophiles, terrorists, rapists and every other offensively politically incorrect thing under the sun (and would hopefully never go out into public, for their own safety): but it is quite another to openly dance around the street en mass and maintain that this is acceptable.  The fact of the matter is, that regardless of what Zwarte Piet was originally suppose to resemble, he/she now looks like a black person dancing around doing Sinterklaas’ bidding.







In a country whose colonial past is much ingrained with the slave trade (much like the United Kingdom) I find it absolutely shocking that the people of this country are still able to celebrate Christmas with a parade of white people dressed up in black-face, and not see the screamingly obvious connotations, even if they are not directly intentional.

If you did this in the UK, you would be stabbed within roughly 2 minutes and 7 seconds.

Why stubbornly cling onto a tradition that we know compromises a whole ethnicity of people’s dignity? A tradition that we know makes people feel uncomfortable, excluded and upset. A tradition that appears to the rest of the world to make fun and jokes of a period of history when African people were subjected to oppression, torture and sub-human treatment under the conquests of various colonial periods including the Dutch Golden Age.

The excuse of “tradition” does not fly with me. It was “tradition” to ritualistically sacrifice animals in the Pagan times in the UK, as it was “tradition” to beat your children in school with a cane until they bled, but thankfully we got rid of those ones when we realised that burning live animals and abusing children is kind-of-completely-unacceptable-behaviour.

I’m NOT saying that Dutch people keep this tradition because they are racist, or because they are intentionally trying to make fun of slavery. Dutch people have obviously been brought up with this around them every year, and see only innocent fun, free sweets and Christmas tradition. What I AM saying, is that Dutch people have had this tradition for so long, that right underneath their noses, it has now lost all meaning, is riddled with confusing backgrounds, and has now become outdated, offensive, and completely unacceptable, without the Dutch even realising what they’re doing.

The bottom line is, how would African-Dutch people feel about this? What do they tell their kids when they ask “Mummy, why are white people dressing up to look like us and parading around the streets?”. How can immigrant children be integrated into a society where their history of oppression appears to be brazenly splashed around the streets each Christmas? If the Dutch claim to be so liberal, tolerant and accepting of other cultures, how can they let this obviously ludicrous tradition continue?

There have, of course, been many objections about this tradition, and an offered solution has been to make all different rainbow colours of Piet. But I don’t think that’s a valid solution either, then you really do make it about colour, the soot story goes completely out the window and the tradition will again morph and evolve into something even more confusing and irrelevant. In my opinion, a valid solution is keep the parade, keep the sweets, keep the costumes and the feather hats, but just don’t have people dressing up in black-face. Call the “helper” just Piet. Piet can be a person of any ethnicity, with no black-face, black gloves, fake red lips or fake afro, just people who want to celebrate Christmas in a parade, whatever their background. Or, The Netherlands can join the rest of the West and get rid of Piet entirely, and replace him with elves (which are completely mythical, have no connotations of a period of real human oppression and are generally unoffensive).

Maybe even more shockingly than the tradition itself, were the brutal arrests of those who made a peaceful protest against Zwarte Piet. Quinsy Gario is a blogger for Science of the Time, editor at the feminist journal LOVER, and the founder of the art project Zwarte Piet Is Racisme. He and three others were arrested in November 2011, after wearing t-shirts that read “Zwarte Piet is racisme” (second video below). Others who publicly and peacefully protested about Zwarte Piet have also been arrested (see first video). Clearly this is an outrageous infringement on freedom of speech, and it seems that the Dutch police will go to any lengths to protect this tradition no matter the cost of human dignity or brutality. (Videos below, need to do some skipping through the Dutch bits if you don't understand Dutch). If you'd like to show your support to Quinsy and his project, go to his facebook group.





As the word “Dutch” is a nationality (not an ethnicity), and will progressively encompass a greater diversity of ethnicities as time goes on and Western countries become more cosmopolitan, how can Zwarte Piet continue to be called a Dutch tradition? All I know is, if I was to start a family in The Netherlands, and have mixed race white-black children, then in the words of Chris Rea, I’d be “driving home for Christmas”.



References:

Wikipedia