Zwarte Piet is good

Welcome on this website about Zwarte Piet. For more information click on the stripes on the left above this website. This website is to explain what Zwarte Piet is all about. Black Pete doesn't exist! When your name is Peter you don't translate it into Jan in dutch. His name can't be explained in the right way then. Simply translating Zwarte Piet in Black Pete because you do not master the dutch language is not smart. In Holland we don't talk about white, black, yellow and red when we are talking about people. We say blank and donker, which means lightskinned and darkskinned in English. So that is a very important difference. When I grew up it was forbidden to say zwart (black) to a darkskinned person. It was not done. So in the Netherlands lets keep it that way. Together we are not grey. In the Sinterklaasfeest a "Black Pete" never existed. Just Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet. The Netherlands is not America. Let's be happy with that.

For information about clothes, rhymes, poems, why black, etc. Look under the stripes on the left above of this page: the sidebar.

Zwarte Piet is here for a good case, laughing and kind. Zwarte Piet stands for everything good and positive about the Sinterklaasfeest and how it all started. Zwarte Piet changed a little in a positive way with positive backgrounds.

It's very important to know because all of a sudden 90 year old people, who survived the war and had people in hiding were very disrespectful treated because they had a very lovely festival and Zwarte Piet in it for a very good reason. It was very strange that people saw Sinterklaas all of a sudden as a normal dutch white man. He is a man of 500 years old so seeing him as a normal human being is very strange.

It was strange that people all of a sudden where calling white people "wit" instead of blank here in the Netherlands when they were talking about Zwarte Piet. That means they didn't know anything about him or the dutch/dutch language. Calling someone wit is offending here. It's as white as paper, not a skincolour. Blank is skincolour for real in the Netherlands. Saying people are wit,zwart,geel and rood here would be very polarizing. And the government doesn't want people to be polarizing at all. Zwart and Wit is mostly used to offend people. Litteraly translate white and black is not done here if you wanna talk about people. Instead we say light coloured and dark coloured, darkskinned, etc.(blank, licht getint, donker getint, donker,etc.) We are not becoming grey in the sun. Your skin will become lighter and darker in the sun, standing all in one line.

We are all people, we are colourful but we are not colours....here in the Netherlands.

Everything about Zwarte Piet musn't be seen as "black and white" as some people do. There's more behind Zwarte Piet and what was meant with it now and in the earlier days.

Important is also what people wanted and still want to accomplish with it: people and of course little children being nice to eachother and forgiving eachother our little mistakes.

There's a lot of satire about Zwarte Piet on the internet just like of Obama, Trump and Maxima en Willem Alexander, etc. I hope people and of course especially the UN are intelligent enough not to think satire is for real.

It is our cultural heritage because Zwarte Piet is as old as the Middle Ages (maybe much older).

Everything about the Sinterklaasfeest was about showing remorse. To give a little attention to your little mistakes and little sins and after that they could be forgiven by your friends and family. If we forgive eachother for our little mistakes we are way ahead to much better things.

I hope for some people it will be an eyeopener and others may be mild about the figure Zwarte Piet and why he is so important for many people. For the Dutch it's almost in their genes, that long he's a part of our lives. And it's a real celebration for everyone because of the very positive reason of it, whatever colour your skin is or religion you practise. I hope the Sinterklaasfeest with our beautiful positive Zwarte Piet will only be uniting.

Zwarte Piet is there for a very good reason. Unregocnizable black (no skincolour black like they use in the English language!). He's from Spain anyway and in history people are Mediterranean there. So it's strange to make your face not unrecognizable. Even if it is only with chimneycolourstripes. Then it should be Mediterranean skincolour and chimneycolour stripes but maybe we shouldn't make it that difficult with our imaginary friend.

It's a good story so let's keep it this way.