Party Pictures! Sinterklaas 2006

[beelikej]

Sinterklaas-celebrations were once again brilliant. Officialy Sint's party is on December 5th but we usually pick the closest weekend available to get together. Traditionally you would have to pick a name out of hat - so to speak - and that's the person you buy a gift for. You write a poem about something that happened in the past year and you wrap the present in a 'surprise-gift', a symbol of that certain event for instance. Since it's kind of hard to arrange the drawing of names (and because we're greedy) we decided years ago to just go mad and buy everyone a gift:) No need for a surprise-wrapping (you can make them if you want), but you do have to write a poem to accompany every present. Because that's what makes it typical Sinterklaas: you can use Sint as a cover to comment on the receiver. It's friendly teasing and mostly just a lot of fun:)

We had such a great time together, pictures don't really capture all the fun we had. (If only because the best moments were so overwhelmingly amusing I just forgot to get my camera;)
Only two minor fuck-ups: 'someone' switched poems with presents, but that turned out to be funny anyway. A little worse was the eau de toilette Sint had bought me, after asking advise in the shop, that accidently was the male-version of CoolWater (and I really wanted the girly kind). Some poor shopgirl in The Hague is gonna have to face the 'stare of doom' when my brother pays her a visit next week;)
But no double presents, nothing broken, no painful poems, just a lot of teasing and dirty jokes. Yeah, best family-get-together ever!

Here is an impression of our afternoon reading poems and unwrapping presents. [link to my picture-corner]

A list of what I got
CD Razorlight, Pride And Prejudice, book 9 in the series Unfortunate Events, a collection of 'so hideous they're adorable' picture frames, a little vacuum pig, two cuddly pigs, a sleeveless shirt, a book from biologist Midas Dekkers about how sports and exercise are evil (I love that guy:) a very complicated clothes hanger and of course candy.

If you're interested, you can find more cultural and historical information about Sinterklaas and his clone Santa here

Comments

[beelikej.livejournal.com]

Sweet dreams! :-)

[tanisafan.livejournal.com]

Oh.

*wibbles*