Zwarte Piet

"Black Peter" redirects here. For other uses, see Black Peter (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Piet Zwart.

A Zwarte Piet in a characteristic Renaissance style outfit

Zwarte Piet (pronounced [ˈzʋɑrtə ˈpit]; English: Black Peter or Black Pete, Luxembourgish: Schwaarze Péiter) is the companion of Saint Nicholas (Dutch: Sinterklaas, Luxembourgish: Kleeschen) in the folklore of the Low Countries. The character first appeared in his current form in an 1850 book by nl and is commonly depicted as a blackamoor. Traditionally Zwarte Piet is said to be black because he is a Moor from Spain. Those portraying Zwarte Piet typically put on blackface make-up and colourful Renaissance attire, in addition to curly wigs, red lipstick and earrings. In recent years, the character has become the subject of controversy, especially in the Netherlands.

Traditions

The Zwarte Piet character is part of the annual feast of St. Nicholas, celebrated on the evening of 5 December (Sinterklaasavond, that is, St. Nicholas' Eve) in the Netherlands, Curaçao and Aruba and on 6 December in Belgium and Luxembourg, when sweets and presents are distributed to children. The characters of Zwarte Pieten appear only in the weeks before Saint Nicholas's feast, first when the saint is welcomed with a parade as he arrives in the country (generally by boat, having traveled from Madrid, Spain). The tasks of the Zwarte Pieten are mostly to amuse children, and to scatter pepernoten, kruidnoten and strooigoed (special sinterklaas candies) for those who come to meet the saint as he visits stores, schools, and other places.

History

Origins

Strooigoed and kruidnoten mix for scattering

According to Hélène Adeline Guerber and others, the origin of Sinterklaas and his helpers has been linked by some to the Wild Hunt of Odin. Riding the white horse Sleipnir he flew through the air as the leader of the Wild Hunt. He was always accompanied by two black ravens, Huginn and Muninn. Those helpers would listen, just like Zwarte Piet, at the chimney – which was just a hole in the roof at that time – to tell Wodan about the good and bad behaviour of the mortals. Due to its speculative character, however, this older "Germanic" theory has little support among present-day scholars, although it continues to be popular in non-scholarly sources. At the same time, it seems clear that the Saint Nicholas tradition contains a number of elements that are not ecclesiastical in origin. According to E. Boer-Dirks, "Nieuw licht op Zwarte Piet. Een kunsthistorisch antwoord op de vraag naar de herkomst", Volkskundig Bulletin, 19 (1993), pp. 1–35, this tradition is derived from German folkloristic research of the first decades of the 19th century (p. 2). This happened relatively early; already in 1863, the Dutch lexicographer Eelco Verwijs is found comparing the feast of St. Nicholas with Germanic pagan traditions and noting that the appearance of Wodan and Eckart in December reminds him of that of St. Nicholas and "his servant Ruprecht" (De christelijke feesten: Eene bijdrage tot de kennis der germaansche mythologie. I. Sinterklaas (The Hague, 1863), p. 40). An older reference to a possible pagan origin of a "St. Nicholas and his black servant with chains", apparently in a Dutch setting, is found in L. Ph. C. van den Bergh, Nederlandsche volksoverleveringen en godenleer (Utrecht, 1836), p. 74 ("...de verschijning van den zwarten knecht van St. Nikolaas met kettingen, die de kinders verschrikt, ... acht ik van heidenschen oorsprong").

Illustration from Jan Schenkman's book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht

In medieval iconography, Saint Nicholas is sometimes presented as taming a chained devil, who may or may not be black. Although no hint of a devil, servant, or any other human or human-like fixed companion to the Saint is found in visual and textual sources from the Netherlands from the 16th until the 19th century, Zwarte Piet and his equivalents in Germanic Europe, according to a long-standing theory, originally must have represented such an enslaved devil, forced to assist his captor. This chained and fire-scorched devil somehow re-emerged in the 19th-century Netherlands in the likeness of a Moor, as a servant of Saint Nicholas. A devil as a helper of the saint can still be found in the Austrian Saint Nicholas tradition, in the character of Krampus.

The introduction of Zwarte Piet did coincide, by and large, with a change in the attitude of the Sinterklaas character. The latter had been quite severe towards bad children himself, and had in fact often been presented as a bogeyman when he was still a solitary character; moreover, some of the same terrifying characteristics that were later associated with his servant Zwarte Piet were often attributed to Saint Nicholas himself. The depiction of a holy man in this light was troubling to both teachers and priests. Sometime after the introduction of Zwarte Piet as Sinterklaas' servant, both characters adopted a softer character. The lyrics of older traditional Sinterklaas songs, still sung today, warn that while Sinterklaas and his assistant will leave well-behaved children presents, they will punish those who have been very naughty. For example, they will take bad children and carry these children off in a burlap sack to their homeland of Spain, where, according to legend, Sinterklaas and his helper dwell out of season. These songs and stories also warn that a child who has been only slightly naughty will not get a present, but a "roe", which is a bundle of birch twigs, implying that they could have gotten a birching instead, or they will simply receive a lump of coal instead of gifts.

In 1850, Amsterdam-based primary school teacher Jan Schenkman published the book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht ("Saint Nicholas and his Servant"), the first time that a servant character is introduced in a printed version of the Saint Nicholas narrative. The servant is depicted as a page, who appears as a dark person wearing clothes associated with Moors. The book also established another mythos that would become standard: the intocht or "entry" ceremony of Saint Nicholas and his servant (then still nameless) involving a steamboat. Schenkman has the two characters arrive from Spain, with no reference made to Nicholas' historical see of Myra (Lycia, modern-day Turkey). In the 1850 version of Schenkman's book, the servant is depicted in simple white clothing with red piping. Starting with the second edition in 1858, the page is shown in a much more colorful page costume reminiscent of the Spanish fashion of earlier days, looking much the same as he does at present. The book stayed in print until 1950 and has had considerable influence on the current celebration. Although in Schenkman's book the servant was nameless, Joseph Albert Alberdingk Thijm already made reference to a dialogue partner of Saint Nicholas with the name "Pieter-me-knecht" in a handwritten note to E.J. Potgieter in 1850. Moreover, writing in 1884, Alberdingk Thijm remembered that in 1828, as a child, he had attended a Saint Nicholas celebration in the house of Dominico Arata, an Italian merchant and consul living in Amsterdam. On this occasion Saint Nicholas had been accompanied by "Pieter me Knecht ..., a frizzy haired Negro", who, rather than a rod, wore a large basket filled with presents. In 1859, Dutch newspaper De Tijd noticed that Saint Nicholas nowadays was often accompanied by "a Negro, who, under the name of Pieter, mijn knecht, is no less popular than the Holy Bishop himself".

In the 1891 book Het Feest van Sinterklaas, the servant is named Pieter. Until 1920 there were several books giving him other names, and in contemporaneous appearances the name and looks still varied considerably.

20th and 21st century

Josephine Baker meeting Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet (V&D Amsterdam, 22 November 1957)

Head Piet carrying the Boek van Sinterklaas on the way from the Steamboat to the City Hall, where they will be officially welcomed by the City Mayor (Groningen 2015)

According to a story from the Legenda Aurea, retold by Eelco Verwijs in his monograph Sinterklaas (1863), one of the miraculous deeds performed by Saint Nicholas after his death consisted of freeing a boy from slavery at the court of the "Emperor of Babylon" and delivering him back to his parents. No mention is made of the boy's skin colour. However, in the course of the 20th century, both fictional and non-fictional narratives started to surface in which Zwarte Piet was considered a former slave who had been freed by the Saint and subsequently had become his lifelong companion.

According to another popular explanation that came to prominence in the later decades of the 20th century, Zwarte Piet is a Spaniard, or an Italian chimney sweep, whose blackness is due to a permanent layer of soot on his body, acquired during his many trips through the chimneys. and J. Helsloot, "De strijd om Zwarte Piet", in: I. Hoving, H. Dibbits & M. Schrover (eds.), Cultuur en migratie in Nederland. Veranderingen van het alledaagse, 1950-2000 (Den Haag, 2005), pp. 249–270; 265.

Though a large majority of the overall populace in both the Netherlands and Belgium is in favor of retaining the traditional Zwarte Piet character, studies have shown that the perception of Zwarte Piet can differ greatly among different ethnic backgrounds, age groups and regions.

Upwards of 90% of the Dutch public don't perceive Zwarte Piet to be a racist character or associate him with slavery and are opposed to altering the character's appearance, with many of the ethnic Dutch considering Zwarte Piet to be an integral part of their culture, childhood and holiday traditions. This correlates to a 2015 study among Dutch children aged 3–7 which showed that they perceive Zwarte Piet to be a fantastical clownish figure rather than a black person. However, the number of Dutch people who are willing to change certain details of the character (for example its lips and hair) is reported to be growing.

Opposition to the figure is mostly found in the most urbanized provinces of North- and South Holland, where between 9% and 7% of the populace wants to change the appearance of Zwarte Piet. In Amsterdam, the nation's capital, most opposition towards the character is found among the Ghanaian, Antillean and Dutch-Surinamese communities, with 50% of the Surinamese considering the figure to be discriminatory to others, whereas 27% consider the figure to be discriminatory towards themselves. The predominance of the Dutch black community among those who oppose the Zwarte Piet character is also visible among the main anti-Zwarte Piet movements, Zwarte Piet Niet and Zwarte Piet is Racisme which have established themselves since the 2010s. Generally, adherents of these groups consider Zwarte Piet to be part of the Dutch colonial heritage, in which black people were subservient to whites and/or are opposed to what they consider stereotypical black ("Black Sambo") features of the figure, such as bright red lips, curly hair and large golden earrings.

The public debate surrounding the figure can be described as polarized, with some protesters considering the figure to be an insult to their ancestry and supporters considering the character to be an inseparable part of their cultural heritage. Recent years have seen a number of incidents in which anti-Zwarte Piet demonstrators have been arrested by the police for disturbing the peace, as well as threats being made towards prominent figures in the anti-Zwarte Piet movement by supporters of the character.

See also

• Border Morris
• Hajji Firuz
• Knecht Ruprecht

External links

• "Dutch debate Sinterklaas' Zwarte Piet" by Caroline Nelissen
• "Six to Eight Black Men" by David Sedaris