December 5--Sinterklaas, Part Two

I was talking to a Dutch classmate about Sinterklaas and he told me a lot about Sinterklaas that I hadn't known before.  (His name is Lars but he said that he was genuinely Dutch, he just has a Swedish name.)  He said that Sinterklaas is a great holiday as long as there are little kids around. 

As long as there are little kids in the family who believe that Sinterklaas exists, everybody gets presents and puts them in a bag and then gets a neighbor to ring the doorbell and then run away, leaving the bag of goodies on the doorstep.  This wows the little kids--Zwarte Piet just left their presents and they almost saw him!--and everyone is happy.

Once everyone is all grown up and doesn't believe in Sinterklaas anymore, though, the holiday gets burdensome.  Everyone gets everyone else in the family a little gift but (and this is the part that apparently the whole nation finds stressfull) you have to include a little heart-felt poem inside the presents as well.  I had never heard of this before and was pretty intrigued.  Well, after class, that very same day, I had to go pay my rent and, while I was waiting for my turn at the counter, I flipped through one of the newspapers lying on the table and what should appear but a comic strip about the stresses of making Sinterklaas poems!  I couldn't take the paper with me and I havevn't been able to find the strip on the internet but I think it was called "Heinz de Kat" or something like that.  In the first panel, Heinz sits at a table with a pen and some paper and says "This year I will get all of my Sinterklaas poems done ahead of time!"  In the second panel, he hasn't written anything down and has little angry squiggles above his head.  In the last panel, he is sitting in a bar, still looking grouchy and he hasn't written anything at all.

Lars said that you could find poem-making engines on the internet to make it easier. I looked it up and if you go here, you can find the "Sinterklaas Gerdichten Generator"--the Sinterklaas Poem Generator.  It works pretty much by sticking the name of the person (and sometimes the type of gift) into a bunch of preset lines which seem to be primarily moralistic poems with a rhyming structure akin to "Roses are Red, Violets are Blue" but I suppose that you can't expect too much from a magical poem maker.

I made a little practice poem for Otis (the best name for Grace's little babykins if he's a boy) in case I were to get him a little teddy bear.

The best poem I found was:

         Weet dat hij veel van Otis houdt
         Uitvluchten laten hem Siberisch koud
         Hij hoopt maar dat dit cadeau hem niet berouwt
         Dit is een teddybeer voor een iemand met een hart van goud

(I dare you to try to sound it out.  If you want to hear what it sounds like when I say it, you can click on this link below.)

The gist of the poem is something like:
      
         Knowing Otis as he does,
         Santa probably ought to leave him in Siberia.
         So he hopes that he doesn't regret giving him this present:
         This teddy bear is for someone with a heart of gold.

Poor little Otis.  I am SURE that he deserves a teddy bear.