merry holidays!

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 dark makeup 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.
  Edit: Looks like this is unrelated to "Black Pete", we don't have that here
- 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.
- Ngl, I'm impressed.

Dutch guy here. Our racist saint Nicolas "Sinterklaas" with blackface "zwarte Piet" isn't Christmas celebration. He arrives in November and celebrates his birthday on the 5th of December by giving gifts to children.
All aspects from American Christmas celebration were stolen from European traditions. The story from Scandinavia, the character from Germany, the name from the Netherlands. But the Dutch tradition isn't Christmas. It's racist though, not arguing that. I'm fighting it though, because fuck racism. Also the racist part is only recent, back in the old days "zwarte Piet" was a white guy with black soot all over him from climbing through the chimney. Later it became a caricature black person which is so fucked up.
Sadly there's a lot of systematic racism deeply nestled in European cultures and traditions. Slowly we are working to getting rid of them, although there are also many fighting to keep them. But luckily we're making progress.
But if we're pointing fingers here, at least we're not celebrating genocide every year by slaughtering insane amounts of turkeys with Thanksgiving 👀
- They weren't stolen, they're descended from. Because white Americans aren't native to the Americas and brought their traditions with them.
  It was kind of a big thing, history wise?
  
  Because the states were new and full of mixed cultures, they desperately created national holidays to create a more general national feeling among the wide variety of people. Many were hand picked, to create a national culture as the states had none. It's all to create unity and identity.
- Dutch girl here,
  The celebration of "Sinterklaas" leaving started with people from Zeeland celebrating that their children weren't kidnapped by the slaves(most black, also some white) of a white dude who came by ship to bring mandarins.
  
  I don't know where your heard that story, but it's completely false. See This Wikipedia page with a detailed history story. This Wikipedia story is confirmed by many other sources. I haven't found any credible source supporting your claim.

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.

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.

Which European country was it that added a loophole to their constitution to allow slavery as punishment then manipulated their legal system to lock a third of black men up again? I forget.
- France.
  
  Now now, The French Foreign Legion isn't slavery. It will just make you wish for nuclear winter.
- Can we not try to avoid introspection into our own racism by talking about someone else's racism please?
  Yes, this is a fucked up thing. Why do you specifically bring it up under a post about European racism tho?
  
  On the one hand, it's bait.
  On the other hand I don't think the country that has formalised slavery and a culture of policing which views it's own citizens as prey really has the right to dictate conversation on race relations.
  In no other field would such failure be seen as authority. You wouldn't pick a garage to fix your car because them accidentally destroying the most engines shows they're experts.
- "my culture can't have racist elements because your culture is racister!"
  truly a smackdown, i am humbled.
  
  Well, you didn't come with actual arguments, so I guess you are humbled.
- Imagine being from the UK and thinking it is some superior country. You're literally a top contender for the worst group of human beings to have ever existed.
  
  I personally don't think the sins of the father pass to the son, because that's what stupid assholes who haven't developed second order thought think, so maybe consider refering to the nation as a concept instead of every living or dead Brit.
- I'm really glad we're doing all that and this is your takeaway because that gives Europeans like yourself every excuse to do nothing. It's okay for me to trip on this rake because somewhere an American is tripping on their rake harder.
  
  You're on a thread that's effectively saying America doesn't have racist traditions like Europe does. The comment above just calmly points out that we do, and some of it is part of our existing legal system. You don't get to insult Europeans (in a way that seems to at least in part be made up) and then get angry when someone points out very legitimate real racism that actually effects a large number of people's lives.
- Ah, Europeans always love to hoist racism over Americans.
  Forget stones, y'all have whole-ass machine guns in those glass houses.
  
  I'm an American.
  What the fuck is this thread? Americans can insult European racism, but a European can't point out American racism?

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
  
  this is genuinely a lot of what i see christmas being here in sweden, in gothenburg they even have a special old tram that goes around before christmas collecting donated presents for poor families to give their kids. There's clearly a desire in a significant portion of the population to kick the commercialism to the wayside and just go back to focusing on things being cozy and compassionate.

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.

they actually had this thing called indian plays in both soviet countries and germany
Americans are so racist they have to fabricate nonexistent racist stuff elsewhere to feel better about their own racism. Impressive.

Germany literally has a children's game called "Who's Afraid of the Black Man"
I don't wanna hear about Racism being a "uniquely American problem"
Cause it very clearly is not.
School shootings and medical debt however ARE "uniquely American problems"
- That's based on the black death, aka. the plague, hence the rules of the game.
  We have enough rascist shit in our culture but this one isn't :)
  
  I actually didnt knew that.Thanks. :)
- Looking back as an adult the origin is clearly racist. But since I sung that in kindergarden myself: We didn't associate "black man" with a person of colour. When I was 4, I was imagining some creep in a black trenchcoat.
- It's seen as an American problem because America is one of the most multicultural countries in the world. It's not surprising you don't hear about racism much in countries with 80%+ white populations
- I learned pretty recently that the "black man" is actually supposed to either be the plague/death or some kind of boogeyman.
  Here in Finland, it used to be "kuka pelkää mustaa miestä" which means the same thing, but was later switched to "kuka pelkää mustekalaa" (mustekala=octopus/squid) because, well, that name didn't work too well when kids started to actually see black men.
  That being said, racism seems to be one of the most popular pastimes in Europe.

I loved grinch back in the nineties.
Nirvana and all that.
- Like... everything that happened in Europe culturally in the 90s was derived from America, even waay into the 00s, and the 10s, and the - y'know what, they've colonised our culture (nevermind that ours was so permeable that we just lapped it all up)! Now I hate The Muppets, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, and it was one of my favourite movies while growing up!
  When did you say we're celebrating Hatemas Eve again, because sign me tf up!
  (/s, of course)
  
  Colonial culture has defined and permeated European culture since forever.
  
  To be fair, lots of influence came from the US and UK in the nineties. Lots of good stuff!
  If I'm angry at something silly it would be coca cola santa lol 😁

- fucking Thank You.
  whenever i post something like this i always hope people here would be at least marginally more willing to engage with them than the average person seeing how left-leaning they tend to be and i'm always proven wrong
  logically i know they're a minority, most people don't even comment, but still.
  never expected to see someone say "i don't care if it's racist it's my culture so It Stays" here. like do you not hear yourself??
- We have been transitioning to "soot" smears rather than full-on blackface and red lipstick, which has been very welcome. Yet some people hate it vehemently, "it's a festival for the children, they don't understand the racist implications so we don't need to change it!" (the latter part isn't generally spoken out loud).

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.
- 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
- 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
- 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#:~:text=Zwarte%20Piet%20had%20in%20deze%20tijd%20nog%20niet%20zijn%20huidige%20naam%3B%20zo%20is%20hij%20op%20een%20centsprent%20uit%201870%20afgebeeld%20als%20een%20schoorsteenveger%20met%20de%20naam%20Zwartjan.
  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).
- Fun post justification for characters originally based on black slaves.
  
  the original original Sinterklaas was a guy that rescued prostitudes

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

Sorry but the comment about the films is horseshit
2024 will mark about two decades of sitting through Home Alone and Die Hard, and before that it was two decades of Shitty Shitty Bang Bang (thanks autocorrect 😂) and The Wizard of Oz
Quite looking forward to the new Wallace and Gromit though!

When do I arm my strategic bomber for the War on Christmas? 🛫💣🎄🎇

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

I remember the Atlanta "Sinterklaas is coming to town" episode, hilarious 😂
But I didn't know about this supposed "tradition beforehand, despite living pretty close to the border and went down the Zwarte Piet rabbithole. There was a huge fight nationwide about if it should be banned or replaced (aka ash on fave instead of blackface) and there were a lot of " traditionalists", let's call them racists wanting to preserve their beloved racism custom. There are grown ass people painting their fave pitch balck, lips red, afro wig and gold hoop earrings. Yeah, definitely normal tradition.
- Most people in the Netherlands are now also opposed to having blackface during Sinterklaas. However, there is a significant group that feel that their identity is threathed if you criticize their tradition. They are not the smartest people in our country (to say it lightly) and they express this opinion by doing stuff like that. Fortunately, they are a minority now and zwarte Piet does not look like that anymore.
  It is a bit strange to have grown up in the Netherlands with zwarte Piet. As a child, I really liked him because I believed that he brought me presents. I wrote him and Sinterklaas letters and I have a lot of drawings of zwarte Piet that I made as a child. I did draw him like a stereotypical black person, because that was what he looked like at the time. As a child I did not know any better and I just liked zwarte Piet. But now when I look back at it I feel ashamed.
  When I found out the issues with zwarte Piet, I stopped including him in the celebrations as a black person. I also had discussions with friends and family members about this. This sometimes lead to a lot of anger. I think they felt like their innocent and happy memories of zwarte Piet they had as a child were tarnished and they were accused of being racist. That was difficult for a while. Currently, all people in my direct environment do not celebrate Sinterklaas anymore with zwarte Piet as a black person. If I ask them why they were angey before about it, they just tell me that I wanted to change things too fast and they felt accused.
  
  Thanks for your personal anecdote, there is always a bit of a disconnect between what is reported on media and how things are actually looking on ground. But glad to hear things have changed much over there.

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.

Meanwhile, Brazil just embraced the capitalism hell-mas. We do like making nativity scenes (presépio)

I hate christmas and I can't wait for it to be over. I actually quite like winter, but christmas always comes to ruin it. The whole thing is a sham, no matter what country does it. Stupid half made up traditions aside, I hate people feeling obligated to get me shit and cutting deeper into our already suffering wallets just to keep our fragile system from immediately imploding.
- we found the one guy who's actually part of the war on christmas
  
  Ya sure did, and back into my hole I go! You'll never get me alive!

And don't forget to spank your women.
- Most of my girlfriends were into that.

The Jim Jefferies Show had a good bit on this: https://youtu.be/piGzE2cMVqA?si=ekVJu9FI7fmKJiA6

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.

My Christmas tradition is some fat drunk Sheppard that comes down the mountain with presents and coal to announce that Christ has been born.
Y'all are weird.

Happy Halcyon Days, everyone!

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?