This year on November 11th, Kevin joined in his first St. Maarten celebration. St Maarten is celebrated in some areas of the Netherlands, (The province we live in is one of them). While the holiday has a religious background (you can read about here on Wikipedia: ) the modern celebration would be closest ( I think) to an American Halloween. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._MartinWe met up with Winnie and Lars (from the 'Sprookjesbos' post, remember?) and we went to Winnie's sisters' house in Almere, about a 35 minute drive away, who has two girls, aged 4 and 7. It was a nice group of 4 children and 3 moms to go out together through the neighborhood.
While the kids don't dress up, they do make paper lanterns and set a candle in the middle (or the safety version is a little LED light on a plastic fishing pole apparatus) which they carry door to door, and then ring the door bell and sing a little song in exchange for some kind of treat.
It's a little rhyming song _ there are many versions, I guess, but we went simple, and the translated version goes something like this:
'Here comes St. Maarten
the cows have tails
the girls have skirts on
there goes St Maarten'
(it sounds cute in Dutch, really!)
Kevin enjoyed getting the candy, (although when they put a bowl in front of him, he can't seem to choose...he just stood there and looked overwhelmed by the decision of choosing just one treat out of a big bowl of treats, especially when there were different candies in the same bowl!) but no so much the singing until we were at the end of the hour and 3 houses away from where we started....then I heard him sing for the first time. Of course, at 2 1/2, with a home made lantern, he got candy just for showing up and being the cutie he is :-)
It was a fun evening, and much more enjoyable for mommy to join in with other Dutch families. I don't know that i would have taken Kevin on my own around even our small neighborhood. It was definitely a case of the more the merrier!
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