Sinterklaas

Sinterklaas… I think most of you know of Sinterklaas, have celebrated it since they where little, or got to know it as a typical Dutch tradition. This Saturday the man and his helpers arrived in the Netherlands again to bring all children in the country presents (if they behaved of course). Since I was little I have been celebrating Sinterklaas with my whole family. When I was still a child the grown ups took care of the presents, but when we (the grandchildren) got older we started celebrating with the hole family (luckily we are with only 14 in total) and everybody has to make a ‘surprise’ for one of the others. The way it goes with my family is that we each draw a name out of a hat (yes a real hat) and we try to get as much juicy stories of everyone as possible to be able to write a nice poem for them and create a nice ‘surprise’ (If you want to know what a ‘surprise’ exactly beholds ask a someone Dutch and they should be able to explain). After everybody knows who to make presents for, everybody sends their wish-list to the whole family. Today I had to create my wish-list. I have celebrating with groups of friends in the past, but this normally ends with everybody having a lot of useless presents nobody actually wants to have (that is also part of the fun). But since I am not good at throwing stuff away, I am still stuck with a bunch of little christmas balls (too little to put in a proper christmas tree), a can of fake snow and a game about preventing your sheep from drowning.

Luckily this is not the case with my family. It has to be something that can be bought for 15 euros. And although (of course) everybody loves to get presents, it is hard to come up with new things each year. 15 euros though is exactly the right amount of money to be able to buy something useful. The first wish-list got in my mailbox yesterday. Since we have been celebrating Sinterklaas for years it is not really a surprise what is on the lists. This was the same case this year, and I read the list with a smile on my face. The first list was coming from my aunt, apart from ecological soap she asked for tissues (man size, because not all ladies tissues seem to be made to be properly used as tissues). To show that this is not just one member of my family thinking about useful presents, the list of my grandmother contains hyacinths and hyacinths and also tissues. Two years ago I got a Dopper (the water bottle) and last year I got a new lunchbox since my previous one was broken. Both products that prevent me from creating a lot of waste (plastic bottles or lunchbacks are history). Inspired by the realisation of last week that there are so little people taking sustainable holidays of wearing sustainable clothes I am really eager to think of an useful present. At this moment I am still trying to come up with useful and therefore hopefully more sustainable products I can put on my own wish-list. Since I don’t have a garden, flowers is not the way to go, asking for a garden will probably not work and solar panels are also not available for 15 euros. If anyone of you has some ideas, please let me know. At this moment I have only written down tea, since that will be something that I will use for sure.