Thursday 11 December 2008

Sinterklaas (St Nicholas) comes to Holland Landing

The feast of St Nicholas is actually December 6 but somehow Sinterklaas knows not to come then but rather when the whole family gets together which this year was on Sunday 7th.  We started with a nice hot meal. Everyone brough part of it or cooked it in our kitchen. Mark, assisted by Luisa, roasted the veggies in our kitchen. The setting afternoon sun cast their shadows on the kitchen wall and you can see how how much Luisa was helping Mark and how attentive he was to the oven and the stove.
Dinner was a delicious affair although Stephen was a bit concerned that he had misplaced the keys of his car.  After dinner we sat down to sing the mandatory Sinterklaas liedjes (songs) without which the good Saint will not come.





Everybody listened very attentively while I told some stories about the good saint and then we sang more songs. Geoff observed that the stories were exactly the same as last year. Hmmm. He actually seemed a little disappointed that I had not done more research on the Internet to come up with some "fresh material."



Then we sang more songs - actually the same songs all over again.

While Stephen and Judith were out at the shops to buy more Coke there was this loud knock on the door and there were sweets and candy flying all over the place. Stephen and Judith came back while we were picking up the scattered sweets. Amazingly, Stephen's car keys were amongst the sweets and candy so we guessed maybe the Sint might have left something more for us in Stephen's car.




Stephen went to have a look and, surprise and excitement, there was a whole sack of goodies in his car. If we were in any doubt where it came from the sack had "De zak van Sinterklaas" written on it.




As you can see, there were lots of nice goodies inside, each with a rhyme attached from which we had to guess the content. 

There was one more surprise. We each received one gift except for Geoff, who received two gifts and Mark none. Hmmm. Obviously Geoff had been a very good boy and Mark had been found lacking. Geoff found this a very heavy burden to bear and gave one of his gifts - a Canadian Tire gift card - to Mark.

After all that we forgot to sing "Dag Sinterklaasje."