Does anyone celebrate the Dutch Sint Nicolaas/Sinterklaas on 5th December?

[UndertheCedartree]

Just wondering if you do how do you celebrate?

My DC's dad is Dutch and they've always left their shoes by the fireplace on the 4th. In the morning there are treats left there. We get things like speculaas, peppernoten, strooigoed, chocolate letters and Sint Nicolaas figures, marzipan. Also hagelslag/vlokken and cocosbrood.

@LustigLustig - sounds lovely!
@LizzieMacQueen - I have had to order things this year. I ordered from hollandshopper. They do lots of traditional treats including chocolate letters.

@Aroundtheworldin80moves - I think naughty children get put in Zwate Piet's sack!

@rorosemary - ah, thank you I'll look into that. It's a shame Sinterklaas can't do his usual arrival.

@MrsWonderland - do you put things in the shoes every night? One night is enough for me to organise!

@UndertheCedartree every year I say "I'm not doing it every night this year" but somehow always get sucked into it when they hopefully leave shoes and carrots

It's mostly just a chocolate, some pepernoten, stroopwafels or sweets but I'll also do a bath bomb, some pens (from HEMA) or similar.

Having said that I said to my DH that I'm definitely not doing it every night this year.

Let's see

We do The German version but it's on the 5th to 6th. Are you sure your DH hasn't got mixed up? I've never heard of the 4th to 5th being used!

Doesn't really matter obviously...

My parents are German and my mum always does something for the children.

@dalrympy

We do The German version but it's on the 5th to 6th. Are you sure your DH hasn't got mixed up? I've never heard of the 4th to 5th being used!

Doesn't really matter obviously...

My parents are German and my mum always does something for the children.

Traditionally it's on the fifth. Meaning that you would fill the shoes on the evening of the 4th before you go to bed in case the child wakes up very early to check the shoe. On the evening of the 5th there is a big knock on the door and when you open it there will be a bag of presents.

That is traditionally. Sometimes it happens that Sinterklaas just might have such a busy schedule that he'll ask a few parents to celebrate it earlier in the weekend or a day before, which they might want to agree to especially if they work shifts.

@LizzieMacQueen

Reading this has prompted me to look at Hema's website. Unfortunately the letters I need are gone 😟. My DH is usually over there so would pick something up but obviously not this year.

Probably not all gone but not all online yet? Or second batch will come. They're selling them early this year but they're not all actually being bought early!

How do you go about this tradition? DH's Nana is German but sadly no longer with us but we'd like to add in a German tradition to celebrate DS' background (doing some French stuff from my side too).

Do we just encourage DS to leave his shoes by the door with a carrot for the reindeer and Nikolaus will leave some sweets, nuts and possibly marzipan?

www.google.nl/amp/s/www.food.com/amp/recipe/dutch-pepernoten-195547

Heres a pepernoten recipe in case you need to make your own this year. Other traditional treats that can be googled how to make by yourself are a banketletter or taaitaai.

Shoes out on the 5th, celebrate on 6th here. (Belgian) We always have speculoos and it used to be a complete pain finding them here in the UK so I’m quite pleased to see that they’ve become a thing now, even if they aren’t the correct shape!

Just thought of another recipes:
Borstplaat
Speculaas

@Twilightstarbright our German way is clean shoes/boots out on the night of the 5th.

We don't do a carrot for reindeer - in our house that's for Christmas Eve! It would be for a white horse if for anything, but we've never left anything out for animals.

The Nikolausapfel i.e. A shiny red apple is the most traditional part for us, but maybe it depends which part of Germany you are from.

My friends in Germany tend to put presents in as well as sweets etc but we keep it lower key as we have Christmas stockings to come 3 weeks later!

My Dc have never been the only ones in their class to celebrate it, and because it is in school time rather than the holidays they do tend to compare notes 🙂. So I try to keep it as traditional as possible anyway.

We usually try and make it special on the evening of the 5th by going into the city to the Christmas market with another German family we know - probably not this year though!

I'll cook some German food, we'll bake chequered cookies and play Nikolaus songs from an ancient tape-recorder.

@LustigLustig thank you. She was from near Munich.

We are expats but there is another German family we are friendly with so will see if they want to do something together.

@MrsWonderland 😂

@Twilightstarbright - my DC leave their shoe by the fireplace on 4th Dec and in the morning there are traditional Dutch treats - spice biscuits, chocolate letters, marzipan etc. We also often get traditional breakfast sprinkles to go on buttered bread and 'coconut bread' as not something you can get in England.

@dalrympy - I may be wrong but I thought the Dutch celebrate 4-5th and the German 5th-6th. Like some nationalities have their main celebration on CE rather than Christmas day

@FenellaMaxwell - it is handy to be able to get speculaas. Can also get stroopwafels, marzipan and chocolate figures that look like Sint. N

We usually do with other Dutch/Belgian families as part of a group we belong to, but I don’t expect that will happen this year

So, we’ll probably just get DD to put her shoe out and ask MIL to send us some goodies to go in it! Thanks for the tip about Hollandshopper, that site looks amazing, but the delivery seems quite expensive.