Not until after sinterklaas came and went again.

My wife won't allow us to do anything Christmas related until after Sint.

It's tradition it always was and she wants to keep it.

Me personally, for me sinterklaas lost It's fun and magic when it became a culture war thing

Basically this is a dutch/Belgian holiday where a bishop (saint Nicholas really) and his servants ride in to town and climb your roof, enter via the chimney and put presents in the house..

Usually him ariving in the country by boat from Spain is a big deal and is televised every year. The gifts happen on the 5th of december in Belgium and the 6th in the Netherlands. The dude arives a week or 2 before that date and the tradition is that kids put their shoe outside of their bedroom by their door with a sugar cube for sinterklaas his horse and a carrot for the servant (or a beer, my dad made me put a beer) and the next morning the kid finds chocolate next to or inside the shoe. And the beer bottle is empty and the sugar cube gone.

At this point you may be thinking oh that sounds so nice and fun and wholesome etc....

But here's the kicker. This servant is called Pete and Pete used to be called "black Pete" and he is portrayed by a white dude or dudette with a completely blackened face with strong red lipstick to make the lips look bigger, a wig of very curly hair and a golden earing in the ears, and wearing early modern period clothing from the 16th century.... You know the Netherlands golden age when they made a fortune exploiting their colonies and trading slaves....

In the earliest iterations like 19th century and early 20th century in some family pictures this black Pete was even depicted with a chain around his neck...

It's pretty obvious he was originally an enslaved African in the lore...

Then from the later half of the 20th century and onwards the lore started to change because how can the good holy man and pateon Saint of all children have slaves right? And the explanation became that since Pete had to go through the chimney he would get sooth all over him and that's why his face is black.... but that doesn't really explain all the rest of the look.

In belgium in the late 20th century in the 1990's the main sinterklaas related tv show came up with "sooth pete" it's the exact same ourfit but the curly hair is optional and not a must and instead of what Americans would call "blackface" Pete had realistic sooth stains on the face.

Everything was fine and dandy and then we got facebook and social media and suddenly it became a huge issue and everyone's feeds just became full of these "protect our traditions keep black Pete black" meme template pictures. And it became a whole anualy recurring culture war issue. Later it turned out 90% of the keep Pete black facebook pages where all owned by 1 dude who monetized the fuck out of the rage.

Anyway at a certain point you had like organizations like kick out black Pete who again, this can't be said enough only wanted to tweak the tradition slightly so it no longer included blackface... and organizations like Pete defence force who wanted to beat up people who opposed the blackface because they wanted to make sinterklaas woke or something

I used to live for this holiday but the constant spam from the protect our tradition crowd and the constant discussion that happened in media and Belgian and dutch related reddit made me kind of hate the whole thing and now I just want Christmas to just supplant it.

I mean Christmas and santa clause are getting more relevant and important every year anyway thanks to us media. And 2 gift giving holidays in 1 month is a bit much. So it's only natural I think that Sinterklaas goes the way of the dodo eventually. And he won't be truely extinct since santa clause is Sinterklaas really.

Sorry I went on a tangent/ rant. If you read all of that kudos to you, treat yourself to a cookie and a coffee or a bag of chips and a coke