Anouk van der Lucht’s children, aged five and eight, go to the parade, put on their shoes and celebrate Christmas Eve. But they know, and have always known: Sinterklaas does not exist.
Van der Lucht, pedagogue and parenting coach from Rotterdam, wants to “live” what she finds important, such as being honest. “And it doesn’t detract from the festive spirit.” This fall she published a picture book containing the real story about the bishop of Myra: How Saint Nicholas became Sinterklaaswith drawings by Maxime van der Wilt. She had heard from parents through her parenting blog that they needed such a book, so she decided to write it herself. “Five thousand copies have been sold.”
More parents are speaking out in favor of this Saint Nicholas variant. Influencer Leonie ter Veld said in her parenting podcast CHILDREN!!! that she does not want to “participate in the lie.” Parenting coach Amber van Bodegom pleads on Instagram for ‘New Sinterklaas’, without “the madness of lies”. Some observe a trend: columnist Evelien Compeer hears it from many parents around them, writes them in Flair. And Telegraphcolumnist and psychiatrist Esther van Fenema writes that “more and more parents, often inspired by influencers, decide not to ‘pass on’ Sinterklaas anymore” – which she herself thinks is a shame.
Associate Professor Rianne Kok, who works at the She sees that parents now share more about how they parent on social media, and that choices about Sinterklaas therefore also have “a greater reach”. What we do know from research, says Kok, is how children react when they hear the truth. “A third to a half say: I was a bit angry or sad, but that lasted for a short time. One in five say: I doubted whether I could still trust big people, but not for a long time.”
According to Kok, a majority of parents say that they do not want to lie to their children, “but if you ask, nine out of ten parents sometimes do that in practice.” Kok mentions casual lies as an example: no, there is no onion in the pasta sauce. Or they lie about what time it is, when children cannot yet tell the time.
Why do parents choose not to participate in the Sinterklaas myth?
Santa’s PlayStation
Almost forty years ago, in her experience, Leiden was the only one who wanted to do things differently. She remembers well that her two-year-old daughter became “panic” when she saw Sinterklaas. He came by the nursery at Groenendijk’s work, she was a nurse at the Leiden University Medical Center. Then she thought: next time she can just watch when ‘Sinterklaas’ is dressing up. She didn’t want to “cheat” to her children anyway, says Groenendijk, and certainly not for such a “commercial party”.
Iris van Meer, creative entrepreneur from Culemborg, knows other parents who make the same choice as her, she says. She made it clear to her four young children from the start that Sinterklaas does not exist. “I saw with others: it remains just as much fun.” Her children think so Sinterklaas news also exciting, she says, “just like them Frozen One of the advantages, says Van Meer, is that you can give your children an honest answer when they ask, for example: ‘Why does he get a PlayStation from Sinterklaas, and I don’t?’
The Sinterklaas news is still exciting, but like children Frozen find exciting
Mathijs van de Sande, university lecturer in Nijmegen, is somewhat open to his three children as to whether Sinterklaas exists. But: “We would prefer to just tell our children how it is when they ask. But the social pressure not to reveal ‘the secret’ is very great. It is actually ridiculous: why should I not be allowed to tell my children the truth, because others do not do that either?”
Degenerate mother
What unites the parents is that they do not want to lie to their children. The discussion about this is indeed alive now, but it is also very old. In 1852 it was already argued that the “nonsense” about Sinterklaas did not belong to an “enlightened education”, described researchers from the University of Groningen in 2015. When the well-known educationalist Jan Ligthart spoke out against the Sinterklaas myth in 1907, the researchers also describe, he was, in his own words, “heated to the shins”.
Paula Groenendijk had the same experience about forty years ago. From the Dragonflyto which she had sent a letter about her way of celebrating Sinterklaas, she received a snide letter in return. “An editor wrote that I was a degenerate mother.” And her daughter’s teacher was so angry, Groenendijk remembers, that she wanted her to stay home on December 5. “But my children never spoke out.”
Even now, the reactions are sometimes strong. When writer (and father) Jan Warndorff entered last year de Volkskrant argued that the party is ready for a “transformation” (wouldn’t it be much nicer for everyone to just open up their cards”?) he was promptly declared ‘Sinterklaas hater’ on NoStyle and PowNed. “I think it is a very nice party,” says Warndorff. “But I found it difficult that I felt I could not be honest with my daughter when she started asking questions, also because the school fully participates in it and, for example, they watch the Sinterklaas news together in class.”
In addition to acclaim, Anouk van der Lucht also received criticism interview about her picture book with it Algemeen Dagblad. Children are made into “wimps,” wrote a reader on the site. Others think it is “pedagogical nonsense” and “politically correct”. One reader even called Van der Lucht angrily. She suspects that it has to do with fear of loss. “Like: enough has already been tampered with this tradition. And I understand that.”
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