Saint Nicholas Arrives In Netherlands

November 17th, Zaanstad. Like each year the first Saturday after 11 November, the red-and-white-clad Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas) arrives by steamboat to great fanfare. The national arrival of Sinterklaas is in North Holland, Zaanstad, in the Zaanse Schans. Around 25.000 visitors turn out along the canals to greet the tall, bearded saint and his helpers, jolly types called Zwarte Pieten or Black Petes. The Dutch tradition of "Zwarte Piet" ("Black Pete"), in which people wear blackface makeup to portray a folkloric servant of Saint Nicholas, has been the source of increasing controversy for what its critics describe as racist caricature. In 2015, a United Nations committee urged the Netherlands, where the tradition is most widespread, to drop the character, finding that “the character of Black Pete is sometimes portrayed in a manner that reflects negative stereotypes of people of African descent and is experienced by many people of African descent as a vestige of slavery." (Photo by Romy Arroyo Fernandez/NurPhoto via Getty Images)