Moralism and irreverence

by Jan Maarten Slagter

The Dutch church at Austin Friars in the City of London is the oldest of its kind in the world. Established in 1550 by Protestants who had fled the Catholic Spanish oppression in the Netherlands, the name 'Dutch church' is in fact a bit of an anachronism: the church preceded the birth of the first independent Dutch state by almost three decades. If you want to study Dutch culture, you could do worse than to start here, on a weekend afternoon in the first week of December.

In a striking historic irony, the annual visit of a Spanish Catholic bishop is by far the best attended event of the year in this bulwark of Dutch Protestantism. Hundreds of Dutch children and their expat-parents crowd into the social hall of the church - the chapel would be more convenient but that would be pushing the boundaries of religious tolerance too far. However, the Dutch vicar is sure to be upstaged by his venerable guest, St Nicholas.

The birthday of St Nicholas (270), or in his colloquial name Sinterklaas, is hands down the most Dutch of all holidays. It is the only celebration that is not internationally religious, imported from the US or dreamt up by shopkeepers. The stern uncle of the more jolly father Christmas comes close to being the personification of 'Dutchness': moralistic, bourgeois and 'gezellig', the Dutch concept of conviviality without alcohol or the prospect of sex being necessarily involved.

The real celebration of Sinterklaas will not start until after the community singing in the social hall has died away. It will start after the last tearful little girl has given Sinterklaas her drawing and the black helpers of the Holy man, 'black Petes', have thrown their last batch of sweets around. Sinterklaas is actually nothing more than a warm-up act for his own celebration, which will only begin when everyone has returned home, to hot cocoa and 'speculaas', Dutch spiced biscuit.

A laundry basket filled with presents will suddenly appear at the doorstep, announced by heavy knocks on the door. The presents will be distributed, one by one. But the intended recipients can only open them after having read aloud the accompanying rhyme. This is when the fun starts. Family members have spent days or weeks thinking up mildly embarrassing anecdotes and kind rebukes and putting them to loosely rhyming verse. This is Dutch Calvinism at work: one has to be humbled before reaping material rewards.

Sinterklaas' secret is the fact that nothing stays hidden from him. In the Netherlands this is actually not as big a feat as it would be in most countries. The architecture of the majority of Dutch houses allows for an uninterrupted view from front - to back. Combined with the insistence of most Dutch families on keeping the curtains open at night, this makes for a very transparent society. By allowing the neighbours to keep tabs on their whereabouts, the Dutch show the world that nothing untoward is happening behind their front doors.

It is no coincidence that the Big Brother television format was thought up by Dutchman John de Mol (1955). The Big Brother House is the ultimate consequence of Dutch open curtains culture. John de Mol, co-founder of multinational TV-production company Endemol, has a particular fine grasp of the likes and dislikes of the common denominator of TV audiences, in Holland and abroad. It has made him a billionaire.

A snapshot of Dutch culture would not be complete without mentioning Johan Cruijff (1947). Holland's best football player ever has evolved over the last two decades into a cultural icon. As opinionated TV-pundit his one-liners, uttered in inimitable mangled syntax, have acquired cult status. No interview with a politician of business leader is complete without the 'Cruijffism': 'Each disadvantage has its advantage'. 'Coincidence is logical', 'If you don't shoot, you don't score' have become part of the Dutch language.

But the importance of Cruijff is more profound than that and dates back to his playing and coaching days. A creative and highly intelligent player, Cruijff challenged accepted wisdom on and off the pitch, for example once using a penalty to pass to another player, leaving the keeper dumbstruck (and beaten). He turned out to be right most of the time. This vindicated and stimulated Dutch questioning of authority. 'Why?' is the default response of children to parents or teachers and of employees to employers. 'Do as you are told' is not a productive approach to get something done.

This seems to be at odds with the moralistic and 'decent' Dutch culture. But it is not a paradox: Protestantism, the reason the Netherlands came into existence in the first place, is based on thinking (about religion) for oneself. And once the 'infallible' Pope had been dismissed as just another believer, who may be wrong on lots of counts, there really was no reason to accept anything from anyone.

Cruijff's anti-authoritarian counterpart in children's literature is Annie M.G. Schmidt (1911-1995), the spiritual mother of a series of irreverent children with peculiar names: Floddertje, Abeltje, Ibbeltje, Otje, Pluk. They have in common a non-traditional upbringing, a healthy lack of respect for their elders and the fact that in the end they turn out to have been right all along, thereby saving the day.

Schmidt's characters are part of a tradition of lovable urchins which was firmly set at the turn of the 19th and 20th century by Dik Trom (author C. Joh. Kievit, 1858 - 1931) and Pietje Bell (author Chris van Abkoude, 1880 - 1960). This last rogue schoolboy was deemed to be so unruly that even in the nineteen-seventies some libraries refused to lend the books to children.

20th century Dutch artists like Karel Appel (1921 - 2006) and Willem De Kooning (1904 - 1997) reflect this independent trait in their wild and abstract paintings.

Yet, inexplicably Sinterklaas, Cruijff and Annie M.G. Schmidt have been left out of the 'canon of the Netherlands', which was presented in October of this year. Commissioned by the Ministry of Education, the canon aims to bring together the key elements from Dutch history and culture to be taught in primary and secondary education. If you've missed Spinoza, Erasmus, Hugo de Groot and Anne Frank in the above, this is the place to look www.entoen.nu

Jan Maarten Slagter was born in 1969 in Leiden, an old university town between Amsterdam and The Hague. He studied law there and then moved to Amsterdam to become an attorney. After almost five years in commercial legal practice he decided to follow his childhood ambition and become a journalist. Since 1998 he has worked for Het Financieele Dagblad, the main financial newspaper of The Netherlands. After several years writing about the banking industry and the financial markets, he moved to London in 2004 as the City correspondent for Het Financieele Dagblad and De Tijd, a Belgian financial newspaper. Jan Maarten lives in Fulham with his wife Hester and son Jan.

© Jan Maarten Slagter. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.