Just a heads-up here to all my readers, as part of this weblog’s public service function, for the coming annual controversy over the Father Christmas-associated figure in Dutch culture of Zwarte Piet or “Black Pete.” As a rule this squabble only gets going around mid-November, when major Dutch cities stage elaborate “arrivals” of Father Christmas (Sinterklaas) from Spain, always accompanied by his multiple Zwarte Piet helpers, gaudily attired and in blackface with a curly black wig, preparatory to the Dutch celebration of pakjesavond on 5 December when Sinterklaas and his assistants visit houses to bring presents to well-behaved children and to chastise the naughty.

Of course, observers outside the Netherlands and even within have come to take increasing offence at what they take to be the implicit racism of Zwarte Piet. Things came to a head during last year’s go-round, what with an intensive level of international press attention and even street-disturbances in the city of Gouda on the occasion of Sinterklaas’ “arrival” there. Recently, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination released its (non-enforceable) judgment that the Netherlands should dial Black Pete back.

It’s possible that last year represented, to coin a (not easily repeatable) phrase, peak Black Pete, as Amsterdam and various other Dutch cities have taken steps to minimize that racial dimension, and have banned Black Pete entirely from their schools. Of course, we’ll have to see when the time comes – in a little over a month – just what the differences will be between the new Black Petes and the old. For there will surely still be Black Petes: there remains considerable resentment among man-on-the-street Dutch people at what is perceived as outside interference in cultural practices that (in their view) do not harm anybody and are ultimately no one’s business outside the Netherlands.

Make that outside the Netherlands or Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, where they also celebrate Sinterklaas (although their pakjesavond is on 6 December*).

“Come on down to Antwerp,” is the message. “We keep our Black Petes black!”

This bit of touristic promotional work comes from alderman Koen Kennis, who represents in Antwerp the N-VA or Nieuw-Vlaamse Alliantie party, a right-wing, strongly Flemish nationalist party whose key demand is for Flanders to secede from Belgium entirely.

Of course, the Netherlands certainly has its own parallel party to the N-VA, namely the Partij voor de Vrijheid (PVV) headed by the notorious Geert Wilders – one which certainly books healthy gains in its electoral support with every such Zwarte Piet controversy. As one would expect, Wilders has been unyielding in his “Leave Black Pete alone!” attitude, but his party is nowhere strong enough in any municipality to push that through as city policy. Things are different – for now – in Antwerp.

* Note to children with family connections in both the Netherlands and Flanders: the two territories are of course adjacent, so keep in mind the “double-dipping” possibilities of presents north of the border on the evening of the 5th, then presents south of the border on the evening of the 6th!

Got a body to dispose of? Maybe even your own – eventually? Then has Antwerp got a deal for you!

Tweedehands graven – yes, that does mean “secondhand graves”! Belgium’s second city is selling off 5,000 grave-plots from its cemeteries – plots for which, of course, those representing their present inhabitants have failed to keep up with the payments. (That’s how it works in Belgium, and the Netherlands as well: you’ve got to have descendents willing to keep paying the charges, for time immemorial! Or at least until the Second Coming.) One can be yours for as little as €1,000 (the initial payment, N.B.), and the 5,000 that are being put up for sale are strictly “of cultural-historical value,” i.e. they are ornamented with some sort of noteworthy sculpture and/or other art-forms. (Not that any of that has anything to do with you or whoever the future inhabitant is going to be!)

Antwerp city officials have even put together a catalogue, it says in this piece from the Dutch news-site Z24. But for me that is not even the most grotesque element of this story; that is rather the advertising campaign the city has also undertaken to move (so to speak) these plots, of which they have sold only 120 so far. Eeeeeeeuuuuuw . . . they have put together a PDF brochure in which Norbert (aged 67) and Dirk (aged 56) hold forth on the joys of arranging for their last resting place among the cultural-historical bargains now on offer. (You can download the PDF here, but of course it is in Dutch.)

That’s also Norbert there in the picture, together with the ad campaign’s slogan: “I’ve found my grave here! You too?” Isn’t that just bizarre? It’s the same kind of faux-enthusiastic, “Hey kids, come join us!” approach which, I can tell you, is more commonly seen in the Netherlands in other ad campaigns trying to get people to sort their plastic from their glass garbage.

Neither Norbert nor Dirk gets around to this particular detail, but let me fill you in on another amazing feature!! (“But WAIT! That’s not all!”) of this offer, and I’ll quote from the Z24 piece:

What is remarkable is that buyers of a grave don’t have to remove the earlier deceased [i.e. the previous occupants – yes, it’s plural!] per se. They can therefore simply “join the queue” [aanschuiven] with the others in the grave.

Turns out, the WSJ also covers this (in English) here, with some added detail.

Things looked bleak for Patrick Van den Kieboom of Edegem, in the Antwerp suburbs. He had imbibed around three glasses of his region’s renowned beers – and who could resist that, on a Saturday night? The problem was that he had then taken the wheel to drive himself and his wife home, and was stopped on the road at a drunk-driver checkpoint.

The key to what happened then is in that word “bijrijder” – yes, “by-rider” or passenger: the officer came up and asked not Mr. Van den Kieboom but rather his wife whether she had been drinking – No – and then had her breathe into the little device. She passed easily, and they were soon on their way again.

The explanation is simple. Van den Kieboom’s car he had bought from a South African who had shipped it to Belgium – it was to Commonwealth standard, whereby the driver sits with the wheel on the right side! But as usual, the Belgian highway officer had come up on the left side as the car was stopped on the right-hand side of the road!

To make the incident even more surreal, his wife even got a BOB keychain for her good behavior! (As pictured; BOB = Bewust Onbeschonken Bestuurder, basically “designated driver,” and the catchy leitmotif for anti-drunk driving campaigns in both the Netherlands and Dutch-speaking Belgium.) Let’s hope they saw sense and switched around soon afterwards to let the wife actually drive – and that no one with authority within the Belgian police reads De Telegraaf (and note, it’s a Dutch, not Belgian, paper)!