Back in Business

That is, the slow come-back of health in our family's life is finally giving me time to give it out again. To examns on sociology. To music. To buying presents.

In the Netherlands we have a sort of competition between mr. Sint (saint) Nicolaas aka mr. Sinterklaas and his name-brother mr. Santa Claus. The first is celebrating his birthday (dec.6) on the day he passed away (dec.5) some hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and the second is his flown over ghost in the new world.
Because the real saint Nicolas was rich and as a bishop of Myra (Turkey), had christian tendencies to give it away, we also give presents to eachother. And maybe because Nicolas was a bishop, giving good advice to everybody, we write some poems that go with sertain presents, to give good advice too. Or to tell somebody in a subtile manner that he/she could do something typical a little different next time.... Whatever.
The Netherlands seem to be the only country in the world that is celebrating this event, why that is, I have no idea. It's a nice ocasion though to organize a feast with typical Dutch pastry!
(for recipies, e-mail me ;-D)

Nowadays the ghost of Sinterklaas is called back to the Netherlands by king Media, and together both Sinterklaas and Santa Claus are in service of the ruler of lifes; queen Spender.
The Sinterklaas-hype starts usually around october with all kinds of pastry in the stores, and all kinds of offers from all kinds of stores. It's a nice ocasion to get to know your citycenter updates. At the end of november the first glassballs and X-mas-green-stuff can be found in the stores. (to give at a present at Sinterklaas maybe?) Than we give bigtime attention to the celebration itself on december the fifth, or the weekend after or even better, more than once: first time mom and dad are playing Sinterklaas and giving presents, later grandpa and grandma are playing Sinterklaas. Result: a full-house, and kids with too much to play with.
Than somewhere 'round december sixth the X-mas hype starts big time. And the whole mediacircus is starting all over again to try to get your last money out of the house. And you know what? the Dutch kids are loving presents under a tree in the house also.

The power of money. The power of greed. The power of connecting 'giving presents' with 'love and real communication and celebrating life together'.

And inbetween we have something with a little baby who was the biggest King ever and after life on Earth, turned into a richer biggest King/Man ever. Try to explane that. To the world. To your kids.