Zwarte Piet (; ; ; ), also known in English by the translated name Black Pete, is a companion of Saint Nicholas (; ; ; ) in the folklore of the Low Countries. Traditionally, Zwarte Piet serves as an assistant to the saint and distributes sweets and gifts to well-behaved children.
The depiction of Zwarte Piet has gone through several changes since the mid 19th century. The earliest known illustration of the character comes from an 1850 book by Amsterdam schoolteacher Jan Schenkman and portrays him as a black Moor. This became the dominant representation of Zwarte Piet throughout the 20th century. Those portraying the traditional version of the character, since deemed a racial stereotype, usually put on blackface and colourful Renaissance attire in addition to curly wigs and bright red lipstick.
This version of Zwarte Piet became increasingly controversial beginning in the late 20th century and throughout the years that followed. Alternatives later debuted, among them multicolored Piets. By 2021 a revised version, dubbed Sooty Piet (), had become more common than the traditional variant at public events and in television specials, films, social media, and advertising. Sooty Piet features the natural skin tone of the actors playing the character with soot marks created by streaks of dark makeup on their faces.
Traditions
The Zwarte Piet character is part of the annual Feast of St. Nicholas that is celebrated on the evening of 5 December (Sinterklaasavond, which is known as Saint Nicholas' Eve in English) in the Netherlands, Bonaire, Curaçao and Aruba. This is when presents and sweets are traditionally distributed to children. The holiday is celebrated on 6 December in Belgium. The Zwarte Piet characters appear only in the weeks before the Feast of Saint Nicholas, first when the saint is welcomed with a parade as he arrives in the country (generally by boat, having traveled from Madrid, Spain). The tasks of the various Zwarte Piets ( in Dutch) are mostly to amuse children and to distribute kruidnoten and pepernoten in the Netherlands, tangerines and speculoos in Belgium, and other strooigoed (special Sinterklaas-themed sweets) to those who come to meet the saint as he visits schools, stores, and other places.
History Origins According to Hélène Adeline Guerber and other historians, the origin of Sinterklaas and his helpers have been linked by some to the Wild Hunt of Odin. While riding the white horse Sleipnir, he flew through the air as the leader of the Wild Hunt. He was always accompanied by two black ravens, Huginn and Muninn. These helpers would listen, just like Zwarte Piet, at the chimneys of the homes they visited to tell Odin about the good and bad behavior of the mortals below.
The Saint Nicholas tradition contains a number of elements that are not ecclesiastical in origin. In medieval iconography, Saint Nicholas is sometimes presented as taming a chained demon, who may or may not be black. However, no hint of a companion, demon, servant, or any other human or human-like fixed companion to the Saint is found in visual and textual sources from the Netherlands from the 16th until the 19th century.E. Boer-Dirks, "Nieuw licht op Zwarte Piet. Een kunsthistorisch antwoord op de vraag naar de herkomst", Volkskundig Bulletin, 19 (1993), pp. 1-35; 2-4, 10, 14. According to a long-standing theory first proposed by Karl Meisen,In Nikolauskult und Nikolausbrauch im Abendlande: Eine kultgeographisch-volkskundliche Untersuchung (Düsseldorf, 1931). Zwarte Piet and his equivalents in Germanic Europe were originally presented as one or more enslaved demons forced to assist their captor. These chained and fire-scorched demons may have been redeveloped as black-skinned humans during the early 19th-century in the Netherlands in the likeness of Moors who work as servants for Saint Nicholas. Others believe Zwarte Piet to be a continuation of a custom in which people with blackface appeared in winter solstice rituals.
One or more demons working as helpers for the saint can still be found in various Austrian, German, Swiss, Hungarian, Czech, Slovak, and Polish Saint Nicholas traditions in the characters of Krampus, Père Fouettard, Schmutzli, Perchta, Knecht Ruprecht, Rubbels, Hanstrapp, Little Babushka, Pelzebock, Klaubauf, and Belsnickel. These companions of Saint Nicholas are often depicted as a group of closely related figures who accompany Saint Nicholas through the territories formerly controlled by the Holy Roman Empire. The characters act as foils to the benevolent gift-giver, or strict disciplinarians who threaten to thrash or abduct disobedient children. Mythologist Jacob Grimm associated the character with the pre-Christian spirit kobold, who could be either benevolent or malicious.
The introduction of Zwarte Piet did coincide, by and large, with a change in the depiction of the Sinterklaas character. Prior to this change, he was often quite strict toward poorly behaved children and often presented as a sort of bogeyman. Many of the terrifying characteristics that were later associated with Zwarte Piet were often attributed to him.For example: J. ter Gouw, in De volksvermaken (Haarlem, 1871), p. 256, describes an ancient tradition of "Zwarte Klazen" in Amsterdam; A.B. van Meerten, in Reisje door het Koningrijk der Nederlanden en het Groot-Hertogdom Luxemburg, voor kinderen (Amsterdam, 1827), describes a (fictional?) St. Nicholas celebration in which the Saint appears "with a black face ... with a whip and a rod in his hands"; and in De Nederlandsche Kindervriend, in gedichtjes voor de welopgevoede jeugd (Amsterdam, 1829), pp. 72-74, "Sinterklaas" is referred to as "a black man" who was said to descend down the chimney "with a great noise of chains" which he used for fettering naughty children. Respondents to a 1943 survey of the Meertens Instituut wrote that they had known Saint Nicholas "as a bishop or as a black man with a chain on his foot" and "in the shape of a black man. The bishop was unknown in my youth" (J. Helsloot, "Sich verkleiden in der niederländischen Festkultur. Der Fall des 'Zwarte Piet'", Rheinisches Jahrbuch für Volkskunde 26 (2005/2006), pp. 137-153; 141). The presentation of a holy man in this light was troubling for both teachers and priests. After the introduction of Zwarte Piet as Sinterklaas' servant, both characters adopted gentler personas.
The lyrics of older traditional Sinterklaas songs, still sung today, warn that Sinterklaas and his assistant will leave well-behaved children presents but punish those who have been naughty. They might even take very poorly behaved children to their homeland of Spain in burlap sacks where, according to legend, they'll be forced to assist them in their workshop for an entire season or longer. These songs and stories also warn that a child who has been only slightly naughty will receive a bundle of birch twigs or a lump of coal instead of gifts.
Development and depiction in the 19th and 20th centuries
In 1845, the Amsterdam-based primary school teacher Jan Schenkman published the book Sint Nikolaas en zijn Knecht (Saint Nicholas and his servant in English). It is considered the first time a servant character was included in a printed version of the Saint Nicholas narrative. The inaugural servant of Saint Nicolaas, 'Zwarte Piet', wears a costume which suggests membership to another culture or the dress of another land.
'Printed five years later in 1850, the revised illustrations in the second edition depict 'Zwarte Piet' in the formalized page uniform which was a prevalent representation during the Golden Age. The change in the Piet's costume establishes a clear hierarchy, a formality which does not exist in the initial depiction. Piet seems to suddenly transition from a localized helper, who signifies a distant place to a distant other who exemplifies the role of service.'Pescatore Frisk, R. (2014) Contested Materiality in Imaginations of Community, The object of 'Zwarte Piet' as embedded in ideas of community in the Netherlands. unpublished thesis, Leiden University, Leiden.
The servant is depicted as a page who appears as a dark-skinned person wearing clothes associated with Moors. The book also established another mythos that would become standard: the intocht or "entry" ceremony of Saint Nicholas and his servant (then still nameless) involving a steamboat. Schenkman has the two characters arrive from Spain with no reference made to Nicholas' historical homeland of Myra (Lycia, which was located in what is now modern-day Turkey).
The book remained in print until 1950 and has had considerable influence on the current celebration. Although in Schenkman's book the servant was nameless, author Joseph Albert Alberdingk Thijm provided him with the name "Pieter-me-knecht" in a handwritten note to E.J. Potgieter in 1850. In 1884, Alberdingk Thijm recalled that, when he was a child in 1828, he had attended a Saint Nicholas celebration in the house of Dominico Arata, an Italian merchant and consul living in Amsterdam. On this occasion, a man portraying Saint Nicholas had been accompanied by another described as "Pieter de Knecht ..., a frizzy haired Negro" who brought a large basket filled with presents.
In 1833, an Amsterdam-based magazine printed a humorous reference to "Pietermanknecht" while describing the fate that those who had sneaked out of their houses to attend that year's St. Nicholas celebrations were supposed to have endured after returning home."Zij echter, die ter sluik op het St. Nicolaas feest hadden rondgewandeld, vonden, te huis komende, de Pietermanknecht te hunnent; de zoons in hunne vaders, de mannen in hunnen vrouwen en de dienstmeisjes in hunne gebiedsters." ("St. Nikolaas", De Arke Noach's, 7, 10 (December 1833), pp. 294-299; p. 296) In 1859, the Dutch newspaper De Tijd noticed that Saint Nicholas was often accompanied by "a Negro, who, under the name of Pieter, mijn knecht, is no less popular than the Holy Bishop himself". In the 1891 book Het Feest van Sinterklaas, the servant is named Pieter. However, up until 1920, several additional publications gave the character other names and depictions that varied considerably.
According to a story from the Legenda Aurea, retold by Eelco Verwijs in his 1863 monograph Sinterklaas, one of the miraculous deeds performed by Saint Nicholas after his death consisted of freeing a boy from slavery at the court of the "Emperor of Babylon" and delivering him back to his parents.Eelco Verwijs, Sinterklaas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1863), p. 13. The slave is a young Alexandrian named Adeodatus. No mention is made of the boy's skin color. However, over the course of the 20th century, narratives started to surface that claimed Zwarte Piet was a former slave who had been freed by the saint and had subsequently become his lifelong companion.See, for instance, the story of the Ethiopian slave "Piter" in Anton van Duinkerken, "De Geschiedenis van Sinterklaas", De Tijd, 21 November 1947, p. 3; "Sint Nicolaas bevrijdde een slaaf. Uit dankbaarheid ging deze vrijwillig de Sint dienen; hij heet Zwarte Piet", De Nieuwsgier, 3 December 1954, p. 3; and also, from a slightly different angle, Puck Volmer, "Hoe Zwarte Piet het knechtje van Sinterklaas werd", De Indische Courant, 29 November 1941, p. 19.
One version of the folklore surrounding the character suggests that Zwarte Piet's blackness is due to a permanent layer of soot on his body acquired during his many trips down the chimneys of the homes he visits.
Early criticism and controversies
The character became increasingly controversial during the latter part of the 20th century. In addition to editorials and newspaper articles, Zwarte Piet was discussed during a 1987 episode of the Dutch edition of Sesame Street. In a segment, Pino, the Dutch version of Big Bird, learned how Zwarte Piet can be interpreted as racist while talking with the Dutch-Surinamese actress and singer Gerda Havertong.