Mystery: this is where the origins of celebrating St. Martin’s Day in Zoetermeer come from

Saint Martin, Saint Martin, the cows have tails! You can hear this in some places in Zoetermeer on November 11, because that is when St. Martin’s Day is celebrated. But what are we actually celebrating?

It varies per city in the Netherlands to what extent St. Martin is celebrated. We don’t celebrate it big in Zoetermeer, but in some neighborhoods local residents celebrate it together. And in the Dorpsstraat there is a lantern parade. But what does Zoetermeer have to do with lantern parades and handing out sweets?

Martin of Tours

To start at the beginning, who is Sint Maarten? Martin of Tours was born in 316 as the son of Roman parents in Savaria, Hungary. In his early teens, Martin joined the Roman army, after which he moved to Gaul* at the age of 15. When he arrived at the city gates of the French city of Amiens, he found a beggar. Maarten gave him half of his cloak. However, this beggar would be the embodiment of Jesus.

Different stories

Yet the story of the beggar is only one aspect of the celebration of St. Martin. There are also theories that the festival has its origins in a Germanic winter festival on November 11. During this celebration, fires were carried around and sacrifices were made to make the land more fertile. The church is said to have adopted this custom in order to gain the trust of the non-Christian population.

Begging sweets

The way of celebrating Saint Martin as we know it today is a ‘begging festival’. In the past, the poor would walk door-to-door on November 11 and receive extra bread and sugar beets to get them through the winter. Now it is children who walk down the street with lanterns and ring the doorbell to ask for sweets. The provinces where Saint Martin is most often celebrated are Groningen, Utrecht, parts of North Holland, North Brabant and Limburg.

Entertain children

Yet the party as we know it has only become ‘popular’ again in the past few decades. This has everything to do with the rise of childcare in the 1980s. Peter Jan Margry, researcher in European Ethnology at the Meertens Institute, explains Quest: “That may seem like a strange observation, but it is true. Supervisors are often looking for ways to entertain the children. And so they had them make lanterns with which they could go door to door on November 11.”

Local initiatives

According to Peter, childcare is not the only reason for the ‘revival’ of the party. “There are people in various places in the Netherlands who want to pay attention to old traditions. For example, neighborhood groups that organize tours in the neighborhood together with schools. And you no longer only find them in traditionally Catholic regions. That is why you see parades in one neighborhood and not in others.”

(Sources: Stilus.nl, ishistorie.nl and Quest)