show transcript
chirasul posted:
my only advice is to BE CAREFUL posting about holiday traditions around europeans. you’ll post something casual like “anyone else watch the old Grinch movie every year? what a classic” and a european will appear as if summoned and say some shit like “funny how USAmericans always CONVENIENTLY forget that Not Everyone On Earth is from The USA……… no of COURSE we dont watch ‘the grunch’ or whatever the fuck that is…. our tradition is to attend a community showing of Glummdorf the Racial Stereotype”
themainspoon replies with screenshots of several tumblr tags and comments:
riseupriseupandcomealong:
my mom’s (american) class tried doing a language exchange thing w a sister school in spain and they decided to send each other boxes of gifts for christmas. the spanish class made remarks about oh christmas in the usa is so commercialized we have ~real traditions~ here and then my mom opened a box full of blackface dolls and blackface doll ornaments and blackface clothespins in front of her students
raygender:
Did once have a Dutch woman
vehemently defend the Festive Christmas Blackface by repeating "it’s different in Europe” with increasing desperation until she was crying. Literally all anybody else present did was just like, calmly say they were uncomfortable with the practice and not change her mind when she wailed about it.
monkey-mulch:
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
themainspoon:
European children waiting patiently on Hatemas Eve for Racism Claus to slur down the chimney and segregate all of their presents by colour.
you bring up rudolph the red nosed reindeer and they bring out Skimbo the filthy redskin and im barely even joking about that they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
IDK about the soviet union, but “indian plays” are not a (common) christmas tradition in Germany. I’ve never even heard of those.
@OP thanks for adding the transcription.
nervously puts his Lumumba away
for those who don’t know: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumumba_(drink)
I’m totally calling it “tote Tante” from now on.
I’m an immigrant in Germany who thought that was just a normal word for spiked hot cocoa 😬
You got that in common with most native Germans until maybe a few years ago.
Minor correction: racist blackface black Pete isn’t a Christmas tradition. Also, we’ve had a big national talk about it, and now the only people who actually do blackface are the actual racists and the rest of us hate them.
On the Three Magi Day, we see lots of children playing them and caroling in an official charity event. Yes, Balthasar often has blackface to more closely match his historical depiction and it’s not racist. (I have talked to the single Black person in my town and they don’t mind.) We just can’t ship enough real Blacks in to play the third of the Magi for this one day. And yes, the Czech song is 50% basically “- Why are you black?” “- It’s the sun.”
Black people are a bit of a curiosity much like in the Middle Ages, and the attitude hasn’t changed much. It’s only people in Prague who are indifferent (except they will default to English), people outside Prague are like “what brought you here?” “oh, interesting”. The real racism is against the Romani and Muslims: most people will think “this guy is here to steal stuff / blow something up” but in Prague they will keep it to themselves.
Yeah it’s Sinterklaas day on the 6th, right?
One of my Dutch coworkers always brought in chocolates. He said that once at Philips he played one of Pieter’s countrymen for the company event (yes in full makeup).
That was a while ago tho…
It’s on December 5th.
As a Dutch person who grew up with this tradition, the tradition doesn’t have all the same racist connotations that historical blackface does. “Zwarte Piet” isn’t put in a bad light but as an approachable friend who brings children gifts. I personally never experienced him as a negative stereotype in any way. There’s been plenty of attempts to tie his origins to slavery or denigrating racist stereotypes, but historians just don’t really find conclusive evidence for that. The reason seems to be more like “just cause” rather than some racist reasoning. He just sort of “popped up”, people liked the character so he stuck around.
Nonetheless, some people are uncomfortable with it. And I don’t think changing the colour of his skin should matter all that much. The story told to kids was that he’s only black due to all the chimney soot (which he climbs through to deliver presents), but a couple years the national broadcaster had a story (there’s a sort of “Sinterklaas News” programme for kids with a new exciting story each year for why this time maybe you won’t get presents but at the last moment everything works out anyway) where the boat that Sinterklaas and the Pieten take from Spain to the Netherlands sailed through a rainbow, so now all the Pieten have all kinds of different rainbow colours instead of black. They ditched some of the other stereotypical stuff (like the bright red lips and earrings) quietly because kids don’t notice nor care about that.
I don’t agree that celebrating with Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) makes someone a racist. It’s an old tradition people were born into, it’s just normal to them and people certainly don’t typically celebrate with Zwarte Piet in order to be negative towards people of colour in any way. Hell, the Netherlands is fairly well known for being tolerant.
I do however agree that if someone asks to change it because it’s uncomfortable, that getting angry about it and deliberately not changing it because of “muh traditions” certainly does seem quite racist. Piet being black is just a detail, it’s not part of the core of the tradition. Like, are these people in the pocket of “big black makeup” or something? Just make them all kinds of colours, looks a lot more cheerful too imo. Thankfully the country is moving away from him being black so hopefully in the future the debate can be laid to rest.
Zwarte Piet in itself is not that bad of a story for children, but you could just use ash as makeup to suggest the scenario instead of whatever this abomination is
Black curly wig, obvious blackface, the golden hoop earrings 😭… Zwarte Piet has been used as a racial stereotype since the late 19th century - it only got worse during the 20th century - even if its origins were originally different and imo needs to be changed (as has been tried and partially succeeded)
Yeh his origins are all over the place and combine in a pretty terrible way. Changing it is for the better.
Sinterklaas supposedly lives in Spain, and some origins suggest Piet is modelled off of Moorish slaves there. But the outfit doesn’t match; it’s based on traditional Moorish outfits as they wore in Venice, and those Moors were free. The bright colours are also reminiscent of the southern Dutch as well as the Venetian carnival.
Decades ago, Piet would announce himself with the clanking of chains. That makes people think of slavery, but they’re not chains as used to bind slaves. Rather, it appears to be coming from the German Krampus, which is more of a boogeyman that scares kids. Piet then changed to make him a friendly and non-scary alternative to Krampus.
Piet has always been described as a “knecht”, which some people interpret as “slave” but that’s a bad translation of the world. A knecht is just someone who helps with some task, and who does just get paid for it like with any other job. A farmhand for example could be a type of knecht, and they aren’t slaves either.
Combined together, it’s the perfect cocktail of “it looks terrible, but does seem coincidental”. Refusing to change it because of “tradition” when people who are uncomfortable kindly ask to do so, that does appear to be the most racist thing about him.
Ngl, I’m impressed.
When do I arm my strategic bomber for the War on Christmas? 🛫💣🎄🎇
And don’t forget to spank your women.
Most of my girlfriends were into that.
This was apparently my reminder that the nordic christmas is not european ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
never seen a blackface, is pretty commercialized and all - but not seen any hateful stuff that I recognize.
it’s commercialized but like, softly so, like the nordics in general.
Americans are incapable of not looking at everything through the lens of their own cultural bias. It’s not unique for them, but boy do they excel at it
The war on Christmas isn’t real but I wish it was
Lets nuke the shit out of the shitty parts but keep the decorated live tree, pretty lights, egg nog, giving poor people and or family members things they cant normally afford and radicalizing our younger family members to be anarchistic leftists over ham or turkey or Chinese food while your older relatives try to push them as far right as possible and complain about everything that comes out of your mouth. You know the good parts of Christmas.
and people wonder why we Russians stick to secular New Year instead of returning to actual Christmas like an actual Christian country would
Meanwhile, Brazil just embraced the capitalism hell-mas. We do like making nativity scenes (presépio)
You literally can’t talk about anything related to the US without Europeans whining. It really is hilarious and quite stupid in general.
you don’t see the irony in this, do you?
Since Americans basically stole every tradition they have from someone else, I’m not gonna worry about their opinion on them :D
The US is a toddler when it comes to history and traditions. I drive by a church that was built in the year 900. That one’s actually called the ‘new church’ since it replaced one from the year 400. That’s history. And we’ve got traditions that go back centuries further.
Just because Americans prefer watered down, tame versions of our European traditions, doesn’t mean the rest of us are going to follow. Krampus, Sunneklaas, Sinterklaas and other traditions are here to stay.
Bigotry is as old as time.
Bragging about how vintage your racism is isn’t impressive.
“our racism is fine because it’s Tradition™”
No, even our traditions change.
Take Sinterklaas, the “blackface” wasn’t something negative. Those black Pete were respected by everyone. It wasn’t like the 1950 US television where blackface was used to represent dumb stereotypes of black people.
But even then, we Europeans see how it can be seen as something negative by certain groups, so to accommodate them they are being changed to soot Petes since they travel through chimneys.
I disagree strongly on the first point. Blackface was not percieved as negative by a lot of people because they had no awareness of it’s significance, but black pete has always been a racist stereotype. It’s not “oh, this is a character who happens to be black”, it’s “this thick-lipped gold-earring wearing pitch-black person with old-timey clothes is the servant of an old bisshop”.
This shit has always been fucked up. And we didn’t just make an easy decision to change them because some people were uncomfortable, people fought for that. And half of the people are still “bUt iTs jUsT a ChIlDrEnS hOlIdAy iS evErYthInG rAciSt tHEse DaYs?”
In some parts of Germany, the gifts are coming from the “Christ’s child” which is an angel, a child, Jesus as a kid, all of them? I am from Germany, and I still don’t know.
It’s obviously child Jesus. It’s not “Christ’s child”, it’s “Christ (the) child”.
Sure, better use child-jesus, the adult one would make everyone sad, especially because he loses the gifts through the holes in his hand. /s
in the Netherlands we have a guy named Saint Nicholas that gave money to prostitudes and other poor people to save them, who then decided to join him. The best translation for their names i have is ‘squires’ but not really. Because they go down our chimneys to deliver gifts it’s tradition for them to have ash on their face, which some are calling blackface.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet
Sounds like you’re referring to the recent (2021) version, “Sooty Pete” but Black Pete has a couple hundred years on him.
I’ve always heard that they were black because of the ashes. and, the original original Sinterklaas rescued prostitudes
… so… why do they wear curly wigs?
… and put on red lipstick?
Does soot make your hair curly and lips extra red?
You forgot the golden hoop earrings 😂
Because they go down our chimneys to deliver gifts it’s tradition for them to have ash on their face, which some are calling blackface.
This was made up later because people were too uncomfortable with it, this was not the original story.
Dutch Wikipedia has the first references to blackness from soot pinned to an image from the 1870s:
“Zwarte Piet had in deze tijd nog niet zijn huidige naam; zo is hij op een centsprent uit 1870 afgebeeld als een schoorsteenveger met de naam Zwartjan.” https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet#%3A~%3Atext=Zwarte+Piet+had+in+deze+tijd+nog+niet+zijn+huidige+naam%3B+zo+is+hij+op+een+centsprent+uit+1870+afgebeeld+als+een+schoorsteenveger+met+de+naam+Zwartjan.
Translates to: "Black Pete did not have his current name yet, he was depicted on an image from the 1870s as a chimney sweeper named “Black Jan” (Jan is a stereotypically Dutch name, one of the most common Dutch first names. Pete, or Piet in Dutch, is also a very common Dutch name).
Roetveegpiet seems to only have come about because of the blackface issue with Zvarte Piet, which was originally portrayed as a moor said to be a literal slave to Sinterklaas. Sooty Piet only got more popular than Black Piet in 2021., going from polls.
I’ve always heard that they were black because of the ashes. and, the original original Sinterklaas rescued prostitudes
every source on the internet will tell you that the soot thing is from like the 90s at the earliest.
Dutch Wikipedia has the first references to blackness from soot pinned to an image from the 1870s:
“Zwarte Piet had in deze tijd nog niet zijn huidige naam; zo is hij op een centsprent uit 1870 afgebeeld als een schoorsteenveger met de naam Zwartjan.” https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet#%3A~%3Atext=Zwarte+Piet+had+in+deze+tijd+nog+niet+zijn+huidige+naam%3B+zo+is+hij+op+een+centsprent+uit+1870+afgebeeld+als+een+schoorsteenveger+met+de+naam+Zwartjan.
Translates to: "Black Pete did not have his current name yet, he was depicted on an image from the 1870s as a chimney sweeper named “Black Jan” (Jan is a stereotypically Dutch name, one of the most common Dutch first names. Pete, or Piet in Dutch, is also a very common Dutch name).
i should have switched languages, there is of course more nuance in the original article. i’m reading a translated version so i may be missing something but “black jan” seems to be a reference to Jan Schenkman, the author. and although it is indeed stated that he had no intention of it being a depiction of a black person, the zeitgeist seems to have willed it into that shape anyway. after that section, the next reference to soot is in the early 1900s (not the 1990s as i read from the english page though). it does look like the soot explanation was the less popular one until fairly recently though.
The name is a reference to Schenkman, but it did refer to the same character.
Piet’s origins are all over the place, and form a perfect cocktail of “it looks bad, but the explanation is fairly innocent”. There’s elements from chimney sweepers, traditional Venetian Moorish outfits, German Krampus, the practical element of having black makeup making a close relative hard to recognize for children, etc… that all combined without much of a clear decision-making process. It all happened very gradually and naturally within Dutch society.
Hopefully we’ll have this changed everywhere soon enough, though there are still some conservative areas that resist the change.
Fun post justification for characters originally based on black slaves.
the original original Sinterklaas was a guy that rescued prostitudes
My Christmas tradition has the Krampus. He’s both not racist and a terrifying monster. I’d call that a holiday tradition jackpot.
Are demons a race or a species?
Krampus does have an unfortunate history of people beating each other up, though. And by “history” I mean “In many places it was the norm until a few years ago, and lots of people didn’t get the memo yet and assault people who wear Krampus suits during parades etc.”.
In my hometown, we never had Krampus parades and it was more like children and Krampus pranking each other.
The parades are already the relatively modern, watered-down/‘family-friendly’ version of the old tradition.
The thing about pranks is that people don’t tend to agree on what is okay for a prank. One person’s funny prank might be another person’s violent assault, same with how the Krampus is allowed to ‘retaliate’.
The Jim Jefferies Show had a good bit on this: https://youtu.be/piGzE2cMVqA
