If you are new to the Netherlands or Belgium, sometime in November you may notice that something peculiar is happening. Supermarkets suddenly fill up with chocolate letters and spiced biscuits. Children start leaving shoes beside fireplaces and back doors. Shop windows turn red, gold and purple. A white-bearded man dressed as a bishop appears on television, arriving by steamboat from Spain. Schools begin rehearsing songs that every Dutch or Flemish adult seems to know by heart. And for several weeks, an impressive number of otherwise sensible adults behave as though the travel arrangements of one elderly saint are a matter of genuine national concern.
Welcome to Sinterklaas.
For newcomers, the celebration can be slightly confusing. He looks a little like Santa Claus, but clearly isn’t. He arrives weeks before Christmas. He comes from Spain rather than the North Pole. He rides a horse. Children leave carrots in their shoes. Dutch adults give one another presents hidden inside elaborate cardboard constructions and accompany them with deliberately embarrassing poems. And although Sinterklaas is celebrated in both the Netherlands and Belgium, the traditions are not quite the same.
So who is the Sint, what exactly happens on 5 and 6 December, and what do you need to know if you suddenly find yourself invited to pakjesavond?
First things first: who is Sinterklaas?
Sinterklaas is the Dutch incarnation of Saint Nicholas, the Christian saint traditionally associated with Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century bishop from Asia Minor, in what is now Turkey. His feast day falls on 6 December, and centuries of legends connected him with generosity, secret gift-giving and the protection of children.
Modern Sinterklaas retains the unmistakable look of a bishop. He wears a red mijter (mitre), carries a staf (crozier) and has an impressively long white beard. Children generally call him Sinterklaas or simply de Sint. The fact that the celebration today is largely secular does not change the costume. Sinterklaas may appear in shopping centres, public schools and television studios, but he still looks as though he has just stepped out of an ecclesiastical procession.
There is, admittedly, one problem with the geography. According to the modern story, Sinterklaas lives in Spain, but he historical Saint Nicholas did not.
Is Sinterklaas Spanish?
There is no single, neat historical explanation for Sinterklaas‘s Spanish residence. What we do know is that many elements of the celebration as we recognise it today became firmly established during the nineteenth century.
One particularly influential figure was Amsterdam teacher Jan Schenkman. His 1850 children’s book Sint Nikolaas en zijn knecht (“Saint Nicholas and his servant”) helped popularise several now-familiar ingredients of the Sinterklaas story, such as the arrival from abroad by steamboat, the rooftop journey on horseback, the book containing information about children’s behaviour and a helper accompanying the Sint. Schenkman also gave us Zie ginds komt de stoomboot, still one of the best-known Sinterklaas songs.
That is worth remembering, because Sinterklaas is often spoken about as though every detail has been handed down unchanged for many centuries. It hasn’t. Like most successful traditions, it has constantly reinvented itself.
The arrival: Sinterklaas season really begins
Sinterklaas does not simply turn up on 5 December. He makes an entrance.
Around the middle of November, towns and cities organise an intocht van Sinterklaas: the ceremonial arrival of the Sint. In the Netherlands, one town is selected each year for the televised landelijke intocht, or national arrival.
The basic storyline is always consistent. Sinterklaas has travelled from Spain by steamboat. Crowds of children wait along the water. The boat docks. The Sint steps ashore with his Pieten and eventually continues through town, usually on his white horse. Local arrivals take place across the country at roughly the same time.
For young children, the adults around them generally commit to the fiction with admirable discipline. This is not a man dressed as Sinterklaas. It is Sinterklaas. He really has come from Spain. The boat really did make the journey.
For 2026, the Dutch national arrival takes place on Saturday 14 November in Grave, in the municipality of Land van Cuijk. The NTR broadcasts the event from noon on NPO Zapp.
Flanders has its own major televised intrede van de Sint, traditionally centred on Antwerp. The Flemish event forms part of a television culture around Sinterklaas that developed separately from the Dutch one.
Once the Sint has arrived, the season is officially underway.
Putting out your shoe
One of the most charming parts of Sinterklaas requires surprisingly little equipment. A shoe will do.
Je schoen zetten means literally to put out your shoe. Children leave a shoe somewhere Sinterklaas can find it, traditionally beside the fireplace. They may put a drawing or letter inside and leave a carrot, some hay or another snack for Sinterklaas’s horse. Before going to bed, they often sing a Sinterklaas song.
During the night, something happens. The carrot disappears. By morning, the shoe may contain a small present, chocolate or sweets.
Parents naturally exercise some influence over precisely how often the Sint happens to visit their particular street. In most households this is not a nightly service. For small children, however, the appeal is obvious. Unlike the one big night of presents, schoen zetten stretches the suspense across several weeks. It also gives you one of the most useful pieces of seasonal Dutch:
Vanavond mogen de kinderen hun schoen zetten.
The children can put out their shoes tonight.
If you live here long enough, somebody will eventually say it to you.
Let’s sing!
Sinterklaas comes with his own soundtrack. There are dozens of traditional sinterklaasliedjes, many of which are so deeply embedded in Dutch and Flemish childhood culture that adults can reproduce them decades after they last consciously learned one.
Among the classics are:
Zie ginds komt de stoomboot
Sinterklaas kapoentje
Zie de maan schijnt door de bomen
Children sing them when putting out their shoes, at school and when waiting for Sinterklaas to arrive.
If you are learning Dutch, there is no particular need to sit down and memorise them. Just give it a few Novembers and they may come for you anyway.
An alarming amount of sugar
Much of Sinterklaas is also an edible tradition. The most obvious treat is the chocoladeletter: a large chocolate letter, traditionally corresponding to the recipient’s first initial. Around Sinterklaas, supermarkets contain entire alphabets made of chocolate.
Then there is speculaas, the familiar spiced biscuit associated with colder weather, and marsepein (marzipan), often shaped into fruit or other objects. And then we arrive at one of the Netherlands’ minor linguistic controversies:
pepernoten or kruidnoten?
The little hard, round, crunchy biscuits sold by the bag are technically kruidnoten. Traditional pepernoten are softer, chewier and more irregular in shape. In ordinary conversation, plenty of people call the crunchy ones pepernoten anyway. This is useful knowledge if you enjoy correcting Dutch people about their own language at parties. Whether it is socially advisable is another question.
Sinterklaas at school
If you have children in a Dutch or Flemish primary school, Sinterklaas will become considerably harder to ignore. Schools may spend weeks making decorations, singing songs, discussing the arrival and preparing for a visit from the Sint. Eventually, Sinterklaas himself may appear.
Traditionally, he carries a large book containing information about the children. Older versions of the celebration placed considerable emphasis on whether they had been braaf (good/well behaved) or stout (naughty). Historically, the older Sinterklaas could be surprisingly menacing. Earlier traditions included threats of punishment, the roe (a bundle of twigs) and even the prospect of naughty children being put into a sack.
Fortunately, the modern Sint has mellowed. A contemporary school visit is much more likely to involve praise, jokes and mildly embarrassing knowledge about children’s hobbies than credible threats of abduction to Spain in a burlap bag. The historical development from stern disciplinarian towards benevolent children’s friend was already visible in nineteenth-century portrayals. Probably an improvement, if you ask me.
Pakjesavond
Here we reach one of the biggest differences between the Netherlands and Belgium. In the Netherlands, the main family celebration usually takes place on the evening of 5 December. This is pakjesavond, literally presents evening.
In families with young children, there may be a mysterious bang on the door. Everyone rushes to investigate, but no visitor is there. A bag of presents, however, has somehow appeared outside. How this feat is accomplished without revealing that one parent has quietly disappeared through the kitchen varies according to family, architecture and level of commitment.
For many Dutch families, this is the emotional climax of the Sinterklaas season. But an interesting thing happens once children stop believing in Sinterklaas: the party survives.
Surprises and poems
Adult Sinterklaas in the Netherlands can become considerably more elaborate. Family members, classmates, groups of friends or colleagues may draw names. You buy a present for one person, but simply wrapping it is sometimes considered insufficient effort. Instead, you make a surprise (pronounce: sur-preez-uh).
Be careful with this word. A Dutch surprise in the Sinterklaas context is not merely something unexpected. It is usually a homemade construction in which the real present is hidden. If your brother is obsessed with cycling, you might build a cardboard bicycle. If your colleague is never seen without coffee, perhaps the gift appears inside an enormous papier-mâché coffee cup. If somebody has spent the entire year renovating a house, there are obvious possibilities involving cardboard, glue and psychological cruelty.
The present is often accompanied by a sinterklaasgedicht; a poem supposedly written by the Sint. The poem traditionally comments on the recipient’s year, personality or habits and is allowed to be teasing. This creates the annual spectacle of thousands of Dutch adults trying desperately to find something that rhymes with hypotheekadviseur. It is difficult to imagine a more culturally specific bonding ritual.
And in Flanders?
Cross the border into Belgium and everything remains recognisable, but the details change.
In Flanders, Sinterklaas is also de Sint. Children put out shoes, receive sweets and presents, sing familiar songs and encounter him at school. The major difference is the date. While Dutch families traditionally focus on pakjesavond on 5 December, Belgian children more typically expect Sinterklaas during the night of 5 to 6 December, his actual feast day. They may therefore go to bed with an empty shoe and wake up on 6 December to presents. Sinterklaas in Flanders also remains more strongly associated with childhood. The elaborate adult Dutch culture of surprises and satirical poems is much less central.
Television has developed differently too. Many Flemish adults grew up with Dag Sinterklaas, created by Hugo Matthysen and first broadcast in the early 1990s. Bart Peeters, a singer and television host, visited the Sint at home and asked the sorts of questions children might reasonably have: how does all of this work? Where does the Sint sleep? What happens behind the scenes? The programme became enough of a cultural institution for VRT to describe it decades later as part of Flanders’ collective television heritage. A new version appeared in 2019.
If Dutch children have Het Sinterklaasjournaal, Flemish viewers have their own set of reference points.
What about Wallonia?
Saint Nicholas does not stop at the Belgian language border. In French-speaking Belgium, he is Saint-Nicolas, and 6 December is likewise an important children’s celebration.
There are similarities. Children leave out shoes, receive sweets and presents, and may meet Saint-Nicolas at school. But some of the imagery comes from a somewhat different francophone tradition. Saint-Nicolas is often associated with a donkey rather than the horse familiar in Dutch-language Sinterklaas culture. His traditional companion is Père Fouettard, historically the darker disciplinary figure who contrasts with the benevolent saint. It is tempting to treat Père Fouettard simply as the French translation of Piet, but that erases some genuine differences in the folklore. The traditions overlap, but they are not identical.
Het Sinterklaasjournaal
One of the quickest ways for a newcomer to understand just how thoroughly Dutch society commits to the Sinterklaas story is to watch Het Sinterklaasjournaal. Since 2001, public broadcaster NTR has produced a daily fictional news programme in the weeks before pakjesavond. The genius of the format is that nobody breaks character. For several weeks, Dutch adults collectively agree to behave as though Sinterklaas is the subject of an unfolding national news story.
Generelly, the storyline follows the same format. There is always a crisis. Something has happened to the steamboat. A vital object has disappeared. The presents are in the wrong place. A Piet has misunderstood an instruction. Will everything be ready by 5 December?
The programme borrows the conventions of genuine television news, but everything happens within the Sinterklaas universe. Schools and local organisers can even connect their own celebrations to the programme’s annual storyline. For 2026, Het Sinterklaasjournaal starts on Monday 9 November and airs every day at 18:00 on NPO Zapp, continuing until 5 December. Merel Westrik presents both the programme and the national arrival in Grave.
If you are learning Dutch, it is unexpectedly good viewing material. The language is relatively accessible, the storylines are easy to follow and the programme opens a window onto a part of Dutch culture that can otherwise be surprisingly difficult to explain. You may also find yourself wanting to know whether the presents made it off the boat. This is how they get you.
Is Sinterklaas Dutch Santa Claus?
No. But also, historically, it is complicated.
The modern American Santa Claus was influenced by Saint Nicholas traditions, including those brought to North America through Dutch cultural history. Even the name Santa Claus is related to Sinterklaas. In today’s Netherlands and Belgium, however, nobody confuses the two.
Sinterklaas and de Kerstman (actual Father Christmas or Santa Claus) are different characters. Sinterklaas comes from Spain, arrives in November and has his celebration on 5 or 6 December. The Kerstman belongs to Christmas. Traditionally, Sinterklaas was the major December gift-giving occasion in many Dutch families, while Christmas had a different character. Contemporary practice is more mixed, and plenty of households now exchange Christmas presents too. Some celebrate Sinterklaas, some celebrate Christmas, many do both. The latter arrangement has obvious advantages for children and less obvious ones for household budgets.
And then there is Piet
Anyone writing about Sinterklaas today has to address his helper Piet.
For much of the twentieth century, Sinterklaas’s helper was commonly portrayed as Zwarte Piet (Black Pete). He was a performer with a fully black-painted face, often combined with a curly wig, red lips, earrings and colourful clothing. Many Dutch and Belgian people who grew up with the character primarily remember childhood excitement, presents and comedy. For many, that personal memory is real. But it is also not the whole historical picture.
The familiar twentieth-century Piet is not an unchanged medieval figure. Sinterklaas did not always have such a helper at all. Jan Schenkman’s influential 1850 book presented the Sint with an unnamed dark-skinned servant. The character’s appearance and role subsequently evolved over generations. The Dutch National Library’s own historical collection shows how much both Sinterklaas and his helper changed over time.
During the late twentieth and especially the early twenty-first century, opposition to the traditional portrayal became increasingly visible. Critics pointed not simply to dark makeup, but to the combination of full blackface, caricatured features and a subordinate servant role, and its resemblance to racist stereotypes of people of African descent. In 2015, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination acknowledged that many Dutch people enjoyed the tradition while also concluding that some portrayals of Zwarte Piet reproduced negative stereotypes experienced as harmful by people of African descent.
Of course, most families who celebrated Sinterklaas with Zwarte Piet were not doing so because they consciously wanted to ridicule Black people. However, this does not mean the imagery was culturally neutral and simply saying “we never meant it that way” cannot be the end of the conversation.
From Zwarte Piet to Piet
The most visible response has been Roetveegpiet, literally “soot-smudge Piet”. Instead of covering the entire face in black makeup, performers have streaks of soot on their faces, explained within the story by their journeys through chimneys. The exaggerated red lips, uniform black wigs, black tights and gold earrings associated with older portrayals have also disappeared from the Dutch national television version.
The NTR began changing Piet’s appearance gradually in 2014 and used its last fully black-painted Pieten in 2018. Since 2019, Het Sinterklaasjournaal and the national Dutch arrival have used roetveegpieten. Practice is not identical everywhere, and the debate did not vanish overnight. But if you are new to the Netherlands or Flanders and wondering what terminology to use, the safest contemporary choice is also the simplest: Piet.
You may hear Roetveegpiet or Roetpiet when people specifically want to describe the modern soot-marked appearance. You will still encounter Zwarte Piet when discussing the older character and the controversy surrounding it.
A little vocabulary before your first pakjesavond
Sinterklaas / de Sint: Saint Nicholas
de mijter: mitre
de staf: crozier
de intocht: ceremonial arrival
de stoomboot: steamboat
je schoen zetten: to put out your shoe
het sinterklaasliedje: Sinterklaas song
de chocoladeletter: chocolate letter
kruidnoten: small crunchy spiced biscuits
pepernoten: traditionally the softer variety, although the name is widely used for kruidnoten too
het strooigoed: small sweets handed or scattered out during the celebration
pakjesavond: the Dutch present-giving evening on 5 December
het sinterklaasgedicht: Sinterklaas poem
de surprise: homemade construction containing a gift
Piet / de Pieten: Sinterklaas’s helper or helpers
de Kerstman: Santa Claus
One final word is worth knowing: gezellig. Because what else is Sinterklaas?
The weeks before 6 December
For all its history, folklore and occasional controversy, everyday Sinterklaas is mostly about anticipation. It is a child carefully placing a shoe by the fireplace. A carrot that has mysteriously disappeared by morning. A chocolate letter hidden at the back of a cupboard. Songs that adults have not sung for thirty years and nevertheless remember perfectly. A school waiting for a very important visitor. A ridiculous cardboard construction that took an entire evening to make. A poem written at 11:30 p.m. because somebody forgot that pakjesavond was tomorrow. And, on Dutch television, an entirely serious news desk investigating the latest disaster involving a steamboat.
In the Netherlands, it traditionally culminates on 5 December. In Belgium, it’s 6 December. The details differ, but then again, they have always changed. One thing always stays the same, though. Every November, the Sint comes back.
Fijne Sinterklaas!