It didn’t surprise me that the New Year’s bonfires would be joyless, but it did surprise me that they seemed more violent than ever to me. Despite all warnings, there were riots everywhere in the country, from Breda to The Hague and Amsterdam, emergency workers and police officers were pelted with fireworks and eventually the Vondel Church was also burned down.
People first asked whether fireworks were the cause of the fire in Amsterdam’s Vondelkerk NOS Journal from the year onwards. I immediately sent someone from research agency Abrahams Quick Research and within ten minutes the director, an otherwise somewhat right-minded figure, reported: “No doubt about it: fireworks!”
Just after midnight I had already feared the complete demise of the entire Netherlands when the phone in my pocket almost exploded with what turned out to be an NL-Alert, but seemed to me more like a final warning from Putin or Trump: “We’re coming!”
The neighbors with whom I celebrated New Year’s Eve had previously reminisced about New Year’s Eve. “Then they stood here on the bridge shooting arrows for hours and a shower of sparks blew in our direction. I sometimes thought: soon all our houses will be on fire.”
I’ve never been afraid of that, I thought in all my silliness, things certainly wouldn’t go that fast in Amsterdam. I always worried about my cat: would it survive all the banging around us if I wasn’t home? Could she be left in the dark or should I just leave a single light on?
So when I got home this time, my inevitable impulse was: look for the cat. I was sorted out quickly. The cat stood behind the door and immediately turned around, meowing as she led the way to her empty food bowl in the kitchen. It is a common misunderstanding: cats are not afraid of fireworks, but of empty food bowls.
Are the Dutch people not yet ready for a national fireworks ban?
My second impulse turned to my cell phone: the news about almost last night. The first thing I read: ‘Vondelkerk burned down’. My sigh must have been heard by Femke Halsema, because she sighed exactly the same later in the News: “Terrible.”
That beautiful Vondelkerk, where in 1969 Gerard Reve was honored as PC Hooft Prize winner in a sensational VPRO broadcast. Now a destroyed church in a neighborhood of the Amsterdam elite. Could one have something to do with the other? Is this a case of public revenge that is now considered a… is called dish is served? I think there is work to be done for the aforementioned research agency.
An issue in line with this: what are we going to do with the Netherlands during New Year’s Eve? Is it wise to introduce a national fireworks ban? In Amsterdam, such a ban has only been counterproductive. They continued to blast until the Vondelkerk collapsed.
Perhaps the Dutch people at large are not yet ready for the ban and we will have to make do with one night full of noise, blood, fire and tears for the time being. King’s Day can also be added. But the rest of the year we act as if nothing is wrong with us.
The journalistic principles of NRC