The death of Saint Nicholas traditions

What secularisation hollowed out, activism finished off

This essay explores how the ancient Sinterklaas tradition was shaped by both Christian saints and pre-Christian winter spirits. Over time, commercial standardisation hollowed it out. More recently, multicultural reform stripped it of its remaining meaning. By removing what was once strange, wild, and dangerous, we lost the very things that made the tradition worth preserving.

The global war on tradition rarely announces itself as such. It comes cloaked in good intentions: inclusion, multiculturalism, and progress. But across the West, local folk customs, from the Gaelic Halloween to Carnival to Christmas, are being critiqued, censored, edited, softened, or erased to fit globalised morals. What began as organic, often ancient rituals are increasingly reinterpreted through ideological frameworks imported from elsewhere.

In the Netherlands, a cultural conflict centers on the Saint Nicholas Feast and especially his helper(s): Black Pete. Every year there are people protesting for and agains…