How Sinterklaas actually works, and what your role is

Sinterklaas is a separate, older festival from Christmas, running for about three weeks with a small ritual most mornings. You are usually the one helping children put out a shoe and keeping the secret, and you may be pulled into the adult version too: a poem, a homemade surprise, and a shared evening on 5 December.

Shoes, songs and the run-up to 5 December

Sinterklaas arrives in the Netherlands by steamboat in mid-November, at a televised national intocht, and every town holds its own local parade too. From that arrival until 5 December, children may put out a shoe near the heating or the chimney in the evening (schoentje zetten), sing a Sinterklaas song, and sometimes leave a carrot for the horse; the next morning there is a small present or some sweets inside. How often this happens is entirely up to your host parents, some do it once a week, some most nights, so ask rather than assuming a pattern.

One rule matters more than any of the details: in front of small children, never say that Sinterklaas is not real. Play along, the way the rest of the household does.

Pakjesavond, 5 December

The evening of 5 December, pakjesavond, is the climax. The family eats together, and at some point during or after dinner a sack of presents appears at the door, often with a knock and nobody quite catching who left it. Everyone opens their presents together. What your own part in this looks like, whether you receive a present too, whether you help hide the sack or answer the door, is a household-specific detail, so ask your host family beforehand rather than being surprised on the night.

Lootjes, surprises and the gedicht

Older children and adults in a household sometimes draw lots (lootjes trekken) weeks in advance, agree a small budget, and give each other a surprise: a handmade paper or cardboard object that hides the real gift inside, along with a gedicht, a rhyming poem that teases the receiver, in a friendly way, about their year. If your host family does this and includes you, it is a genuine sign you are treated as part of the household, and it is also real work: ask early how much time and budget it usually takes, so you are not building a surprise the night before. Typical festive foods around this period are pepernoten, kruidnoten, speculaas, chocolate letters and marzipan.

Zwarte Piet and Roetveegpiet

Sinterklaas is accompanied by helpers called Pieten. In the traditional version, Piet was played with a fully blackened face, red lips and a curly wig, a look many people, particularly Black Dutch people, see as a racist caricature with roots in a colonial past; other Dutch people see it as an innocent children's tradition and object to changing it. The disagreement has been part of Dutch public life for years, and families, schools and towns do not agree with each other about it. Since 2019 the national broadcaster's televised intocht and the children's programme Sinterklaasjournaal use only roetveegpieten, helpers with a few sooty smudges on the face, explained to children as coming from climbing down chimneys. Away from the national broadcast, practice is mixed and depends on the individual town and school: some use roetveegpieten only, some still use the traditional version, and it can change from year to year in a given place. There is no reliable national figure for how common each version is, so the only way to know what your host family's school actually does is to ask them directly, before the season starts.

What to do if it makes you uncomfortable

You are not expected to take a side in this. If a school party or a family tradition makes you uncomfortable, say so calmly and privately to your host parents rather than reacting in front of the children, and it is a reasonable request to ask not to dress up as a Piet yourself. Be careful about filming or posting photos from a school party online, other people's children are in them too. And whatever your own view, avoid arguing about it in front of the kids, that is not a conversation for them to referee.