The Epic Battle

Uncovering urban lifestyle, contemporary trends and other (Canadian) peculiarities from a totally biased and nonobjective European perspective. Infiltration, intrigues, wonder and more ...

Being in the infiltration business gives one some unique opportunities and insights. This week, I managed to uncover that age old mystery: What does Sinterklaas / Santa Claus do when it's Summer ?

Around the fifth of December, Caucasian Holland slips into a frenzy. Parents rush to the stores to collect as many presents as they can for their offspring. None of their efforts and spending will be rewarded or recognized, as their spoiled brats think these gifts come from a bearded old dude called Sinterklaas (Sint Nicolas). Ironically, it's the parents who keep up the lie to their little clones and tell them that these gifts were brought from Spain to Holland by this Sint entity.

There's no loss though. In the end everyone wins: the kids have fancy new toys, the parents get a highly effective tool to manipulate their kids for two months in a year and the stores collect huge piles of Dutch Euros. Finally, the real Sinterklaas thinks it's all fine and dandy. He is the kids' favorite and doesn't have to leave Spain to that cold forsaken country to ride that shitty old stubborn mare. In fact, since everybody thinks he doesn't really exists, he enjoys some fantastic tax benefits.

Naturally, this commercial endeavor inspired the far West to come up with something similar. However, the idea that some old Spanish geezer invades Canadia on an old barge to drop off some presents, is a hard sell to the more critical Canadian youngsters. To give the story some more credit, the Northern Americans decided that instead, he comes from around the corner, the North Pole. Because the seas freeze up during the winter months, the boat would have gotten nowhere, so this Sint flies. On a sled. Pulled by deer. Of which one has a blinky red light on his nose. Much more believable. Yes, Santa Claus it's you !

Apparently, the real Sint got a bit pissed off by this whole affair. Not only was his job taken and his identity stolen and warped into this -in his words- "Santa Clown", but they also implied his boat couldn't pull it off. To show who they're dealing with, the Sint left his cozy coastal beach house and set off a course towards ... Vancouver. As soon as the Santa Claus found out about the Sint´s plans, he demanded his gay cronies (*) to fix him a boat as well...

Thus Sint and Santa meet every year in the English bay of Vancouver to duke it out. To preserve their identities, they enter this fierce competition under the flags of Canadia and Spain. There's also a Chinese delegation. Evidently, the Chinese have some sort of Sinterklaas / Santa Claus as well (ChinKlaas?), who also feels mortally offended by the fact that there are people claiming that they are him..

In good tradition of these Saints, there's no real loss, it's the public who wins. The kids get to see some spectacular fireworks, the parents get to manipulate their offspring into some decent behaviour for a while and the stores actually get some visitors during the nightly hours...

Too bad for Sinterklaas the tax collectors got a trace on him now...

(*) Sinterklaas has helpers called "Pieten", which in good old European racist fashion are black people. Because this would be politically incorrect, the Americanos set up Santa Claus with a bunch of elves, which we all know are very happy people... In the end, you can only have so much political correctheid.

conspiracy ... conspiracy ... conspiracy