Merry Christmas!

Well, Happy Holidays to all. I'm on my Christmas vacation right now, hanging out in Chiang Mai, Thailand, with my friend Mer (Grinnellian working for an NGO outside the city here). We're going to spend the holiday at the spa, getting massages and stuff, and also eating a LOT of food. There are a lot of tourists here, but otherwise Christmas isn't a big holiday here.

In Manado, however, Christmas is a very big deal, and I'm sure that it would be exciting to be there (I'm glad to have the exciting vacation, though). Manadonese people get a lot of their traditions from the Dutch, so Santa came on December 6th, not the 25th. In Dutch tradition, Santa (or Sinterklaas) lives in Spain, and travels to the Netherlands every year by boat. He sends Black Pete down the chimney (so he doesn't get dirty himself, I guess), and the good children get presents. The bad children get put in a sack and taken back to Spain, which seems pretty awesome, actually.

Now, Black Pete is black because of the soot from the chimney, but originally the character may have been a slave, or maybe he was just a Moor (from North Africa). I've heard varying reports from Dutch tourists. In any case, Sinterklaas sometimes travels around the streets, and he takes a man in blackface with him.


In Manado, they drive around in the back of a truck, blasting Christmas music. And Santa has four or five men in blackface, and a clown, too, for some reason. This has happened a number of times; you hear really loud Christmas and you start looking around for the traffic slow-up that is Santa and his posse (he's followed by decorated angkots, so traffic is definitely effected).

Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good holiday. It's a little hard to believe that it's Christmas, because it's so warm and unchanging here that time doesn't seem to work the same way. But I'm thinking of everyone back home and wishing you well!