SINTERKLAAS 1 (28 december 2003)
On New Year's eve I will not only celebrate the transition to a new year with my family, but we will also celebrate Sinterklaas , which we postponed a few weeks ago.
If you do Sinterklaas properly, it takes a lot of preparation. As you can read in the linked page, grown-ups often celebrate it by making a surprise and a rhyme. I know for instance that my youngest daughter must have spent ten hours or so to make a good rhyme and surprise for a Sinterklaas-party with her schoolmates. But it probably gave her the satisfaction of having made the most beautiful surprise of the party.
A few years ago, another daughter of mine had put a lot of effort into making her rhyme and surprise. When it was her turn to receive something, the boy who had drawn lots to make something for my daughter, turned out to have made nothing at all - although he obviously found it no problem to receive a surprise someone else had made for him.
If you ask my brother Paul, he will still be able to tell you about his at primary school time, when he had put a lot of effort into making something nice for the Sinterklaas celebration, but the surprise he got was nothing more than a herring with a ballpoint pen in its arse.
What does this story show? Not much, or at least that antisocial behaviour is of all times.
