Sunday Musings: We Don’t Give Our Kids Presents at Christmas {Why We Gift on Sinterklaas Avond}

I’m 1st generation Canadian. My parents were both born in the Netherlands, and while Dutch was never a language spoken in our home (both my set so of grandparents wanted to learn English, so they only spoke English at home – meaning that my parents didn’t learn a lot of Dutch), we were no strangers to Dutch Traditions. 

Every year in in the first week of December, all of us kids would help mom roll out and cut Pepernoten, little Dutch spice cookies. She’d buy Taai Taai (literally translates as ‘tough tough’ – it’s a little chewy & hard to bite!) cookies for a special treat, too. When we’d give our presents, we’d all have to write poems to go along with the gifts that we gave – mom has about 10 years (at least!) of these poems at home in the closet, and some of them (notably MINE) are simply terrible! I’ve since learned that this poem-giving thing is a Dutch tradition, too! The Dutch that I learn while growing up was entirely found in the song, “Ere Zij God”, or Glory to God, a Dutch Christmas song that’s sung in Christian Reformed churches across Canada every Christmas.

Sinterklaas is the Dutch Saint Nicholas and is one of the sources of our modern day Santa Claus. St Nick was the patron saint of Children. Stories go that he was a benevolent rich bishop from Spain who came to the Netherlands, armed with little oranges, special treats (like Pepernoten & Taai Taai), and gold coins, and deposited collections of these little treasures in childrens’ wooden shoes that lay outside the front door on the porch on December 5, Sinterklaas Avond. (Yes, there’s also “Zwarte Piet” – Black Peter – in the stories, but I’ll leave that one for another day.) 

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While both my husband and I grew up opening presents with our families sometime shortly before Christmas (never Christmas Day – that was a day for church & family!), we decided that we would do presents with our kids our on December 5, Sinterklaas Avond, which is near the very beginning of the Advent season. The word Advent means ‘waiting for the arrival of a notable person or thing’ – and we wanted to make sure that Santa wasn’t the one that our kids spent the whole of Advent waiting for. You’ve all seen the large billboards that come out on barns and on the sides of highways during the Christmas season that bear the now-cliche phrase, “JESUS is the Reason for the Season!” Well, it’s true. While we love the tradition of gifting and sharing at Christmas, we also want to make sure that celebrating the birth of Jesus remains front and centre in our house during the Advent season. 

By separating the act of giving & receiving presents from ‘Christmas’, we hope to teach our kids to focus on Jesus, who, in turn, spent his life focused on others. It’s easy to spend the Christmas season wrapped up in our Christmas lists, daydreaming about what other people will be giving us for Christmas – we’re going to do our best to turn that inside out and focus our attention outwards. 

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Jenn vanOosten

I live in Hamilton, Ontario, and love my city. I'm a Netflixer, choral music geek, bookworm, inventor of recipes (I take Artistic Licence on EVERYTHING that I make), wife of one, mother of two, and owner of a neurotic Schnauzer. I respect people who respect others. I love good food that's well done, but my favourite lunch is KD & hotdogs. With ketchup. I'm addicted to Clearance Shopping. I will ALWAYS get the product that I want at the price that I want, eventually.

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