Today is the feast day of Sint Maarten (Saint Martin's day or Martinmas) in the Netherlands. Sint Maarten was originally a Roman soldier, born in what is now Hungary, who eventually became a monk and ended up being the Bishop of Tours in France. One of the most famous legends connected with him was when he came across a beggar during a snowstorm and cut his military cloak in half in order to give part of it to the beggar and prevent him from dying due to the cold. The following night he had a dream in which it was Jesus who was wearing his half-cloak. From then on he decided to dedicate his life to Christ and choose to get baptised shortly afterwards. Nowadays his feast day is held every year on the 11th November and, rather like Halloween, children make their way through the streets with candles, paper lanterns and occasionally carved turnips, sing traditional Sint Maarten songs and receive treats in return.
Last year Luz and Matthew were in Peru on this date and I forgot to buy sweets. Therefore, whenever any children knocked on the door and sang their songs I had to search around the kitchen for something to give them - biscuits, crisps, fruit etc. Once they had run out I had to resort to giving money as I felt a bit embarrased to give them nothing. This generated quite a bit of amazement amongst their parents who were totally unexpecting such behaviour no doubt.
One mother asked me why I hadn't got any sweets to hand out and if I knew what the evening was all about. I had simply forgotten all about it because when I used to live in the centre of Haarlem I got no visitors at all on Sint Maarten's evening and so wasn't expecting many visitors. But in the area where we live now there are many more families with young children and so their was an almost constant knocking on the front door. Of course I didn't explain all this to the mother, I just lied and said I had no idea what it was all about. Thankfully she then went into a long explanation of the history and meaning of the festival. Luckily it was pretty dark and so she was unable to see that my eyes had started to glaze over by the time she had finished. And looking at the size of her children she should have been grateful that I was giving them fruit rather than yet more sweets. In the end I give up, turned the lights out, closed the curtains and pretended to be out. After a few minutes of knocking the visitors simply gave up and moved onto the house next-door! Anyway, this year I was fully prepared and went out and bought lots of bags of sweets which I poured into a large bowl which could be handed around to all the expected youngsters who would come knocking. Although, in the end, I never got the opportunity to hand out the sweets as I had somehow managed to drive over something on the way back from the supermarket and had put a large hole in one of the tyres on my car. So I had to spend most of the evening changing it (with some help from my neighbour as it proved extremely difficult to remove).
However, from my vantage point crouched at the side of my car I did have an excellent view of the constant stream of visitors passing down our street with their paper lanterns, knocking on all the doors, singing their songs and receiving their treats. Matthew helped Luz to hand them out and seemed to find it all very enjoyable although he is still a bit too young to have fully understood what its all about. Maybe next year we can go out with him and join in the fun. Of course we'll need to learn some of the Sint Maarten songs first.
For more information about the typical Dutch traditions of Sint Maarten's evening, instructions on how to make a paper lantern and some of the usual songs see here (in Dutch but you should be able to get a good idea of what its all about).
