show transcript
chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you’ll post something casual like “anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic” and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like “funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA……… no of COURSE we dont watch ‘the grunch’ or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype”
themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:
riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students
raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman
vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it’s different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.
monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.
nervously puts his Lumumba away
I’m an immigrant in Germany who thought that was just a normal word for spiked hot cocoa 😬
Minor correction: racist blackface black Pete isn’t a Christmas tradition. Also, we’ve had a big national talk about it, and now the only people who actually do blackface are the actual racists and the rest of us hate them.
Yeah it’s Sinterklaas day on the 6th, right?
One of my Dutch coworkers always brought in chocolates. He said that once at Philips he played one of Pieter’s countrymen for the company event (yes in full makeup).
That was a while ago tho…
It’s on December 5th.
As a Dutch person who grew up with this tradition, the tradition doesn’t have all the same racist connotations that historical blackface does. “Zwarte Piet” isn’t put in a bad light but as an approachable friend who brings children gifts. I personally never experienced him as a negative stereotype in any way. There’s been plenty of attempts to tie his origins to slavery or denigrating racist stereotypes, but historians just don’t really find conclusive evidence for that. The reason seems to be more like “just cause” rather than some racist reasoning. He just sort of “popped up”, people liked the character so he stuck around.
Nonetheless, some people are uncomfortable with it. And I don’t think changing the colour of his skin should matter all that much. The story told to kids was that he’s only black due to all the chimney soot (which he climbs through to deliver presents), but a couple years the national broadcaster had a story (there’s a sort of “Sinterklaas News” programme for kids with a new exciting story each year for why this time maybe you won’t get presents but at the last moment everything works out anyway) where the boat that Sinterklaas and the Pieten take from Spain to the Netherlands sailed through a rainbow, so now all the Pieten have all kinds of different rainbow colours instead of black. They ditched some of the other stereotypical stuff (like the bright red lips and earrings) quietly because kids don’t notice nor care about that.
I don’t agree that celebrating with Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) makes someone a racist. It’s an old tradition people were born into, it’s just normal to them and people certainly don’t typically celebrate with Zwarte Piet in order to be negative towards people of colour in any way. Hell, the Netherlands is fairly well known for being tolerant.
I do however agree that if someone asks to change it because it’s uncomfortable, that getting angry about it and deliberately not changing it because of “muh traditions” certainly does seem quite racist. Piet being black is just a detail, it’s not part of the core of the tradition. Like, are these people in the pocket of “big black makeup” or something? Just make them all kinds of colours, looks a lot more cheerful too imo. Thankfully the country is moving away from him being black so hopefully in the future the debate can be laid to rest.
Zwarte Piet in itself is not that bad of a story for children, but you could just use ash as makeup to suggest the scenario instead of whatever this abomination is
Black curly wig, obvious blackface, the golden hoop earrings 😭… Zwarte Piet has been used as a racial stereotype since the late 19th century - it only got worse during the 20th century - even if its origins were originally different and imo needs to be changed (as has been tried and partially succeeded)
On the Three Magi Day, we see lots of children playing them and caroling in an official charity event. Yes, Balthasar often has dark makeup to more closely match his historical depiction and it’s not racist. (I have talked to the single Black person in my town and they don’t mind.) We just can’t ship enough real Blacks in to play the third of the Magi for this one day. And yes, the Czech song is 50% basically “- Why are you black?” “- It’s the sun.”
Black people are a bit of a curiosity much like in the Middle Ages, and the attitude hasn’t changed much. It’s only people in Prague who are indifferent (except they will default to English), people outside Prague are like “what brought you here?” “oh, interesting”. The real racism is against the Romani and Muslims: most people will think “this guy is here to steal stuff / blow something up” but in Prague they will keep it to themselves.
Edit: Looks like this is unrelated to “Black Pete”, we don’t have that here
When do I arm my strategic bomber for the War on Christmas? 🛫💣🎄🎇
In some parts of Germany, the gifts are coming from the “Christ’s child” which is an angel, a child, Jesus as a kid, all of them? I am from Germany, and I still don’t know.
It’s obviously child Jesus. It’s not “Christ’s child”, it’s “Christ (the) child”.
in the Netherlands we have a guy named Saint Nicholas that gave money to prostitudes and other poor people to save them, who then decided to join him. The best translation for their names i have is ‘squires’ but not really. Because they go down our chimneys to deliver gifts it’s tradition for them to have ash on their face, which some are calling blackface.
Roetveegpiet seems to only have come about because of the blackface issue with Zvarte Piet, which was originally portrayed as a moor said to be a literal slave to Sinterklaas. Sooty Piet only got more popular than Black Piet in 2021., going from polls.
I’ve always heard that they were black because of the ashes. and, the original original Sinterklaas rescued prostitudes
every source on the internet will tell you that the soot thing is from like the 90s at the earliest.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet
Sounds like you’re referring to the recent (2021) version, “Sooty Pete” but Black Pete has a couple hundred years on him.
I’ve always heard that they were black because of the ashes. and, the original original Sinterklaas rescued prostitudes
… so… why do they wear curly wigs?
… and put on red lipstick?
Does soot make your hair curly and lips extra red?
Because they go down our chimneys to deliver gifts it’s tradition for them to have ash on their face, which some are calling blackface.
This was made up later because people were too uncomfortable with it, this was not the original story.
Dutch Wikipedia has the first references to blackness from soot pinned to an image from the 1870s:
“Zwarte Piet had in deze tijd nog niet zijn huidige naam; zo is hij op een centsprent uit 1870 afgebeeld als een schoorsteenveger met de naam Zwartjan.” https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet#:~:text=Zwarte Piet had in deze tijd nog niet zijn huidige naam%3B zo is hij op een centsprent uit 1870 afgebeeld als een schoorsteenveger met de naam Zwartjan.
Translates to: "Black Pete did not have his current name yet, he was depicted on an image from the 1870s as a chimney sweeper named “Black Jan” (Jan is a stereotypically Dutch name, one of the most common Dutch first names. Pete, or Piet in Dutch, is also a very common Dutch name).
