Cranking up the war on Xmas. Watch out Sinterklass ...

Okay, we're in the final stretch, it's the final month of the year, the count-down has begun, and already the pond's intrepid correspondent in New York is reporting that Black Friday is madder than ever, while the intricacies of Thanksgivingukkah were completely inexplicable to any outsider, and perhaps even to Americans, except that you had to eat dry, cardboard-tasting turkey in abundance and think about rules in relation to Thanksgivingukkah sex.

This silly correspondent was more concerned with a smackdown between Vladimir Nabokov and the original and unique Dorothy Parker, as concocted in Vulture here, than the deeper issues doing the rounds. Like the war on Xmas ...

As usual, in that story, the woman misses out, but it contained a great photo of the immortal original Dorothy which we shamelessly replicate (click to enlarge):

But the pond isn't bitter, because we've got other fish to fry, and this being meditative Sunday, why not recommence the war on Xmas, in a lull these past eleven months?

Show us an Xmas, and we'll have a go at it. Bah, humbug.

You can never start too early - just like Xmas shopping - and besides, where would Fox News, and Bill Orally and other craven Murdochians of the Foxian kind be without fighting a war on the war on Xmas?

But enough of the Americans, who are generally so far up their fundament that they don't have a clue.

Well except for New Yorkers, who have clustered with excitement at the latest exhibition of Yakoi Kusama. Apparently, the pond's correspondent advises, the queues have been around the block. 

Something about having arrived in heaven, as you can read here:

But enough of this bizarre hedonism, even allowing for a meditative Sunday, because the pond has other fish to fry.

You see, the pond unfortunately has to have a spam catcher - after seven days, the comments go into the digital void because the amount of spam the pond catches is remarkable. The pond rarely pays attention to this void, the main focus of attention being the fluff-gathering of navel gazers like the Bolter.

Never mind, it seems a correspondent of the Dutch kind got very agitated about a previous pond mention of the peculiar Dutch cultural fetish for Sinterklass and the racial components thereto.

Luckily we saved the agitated scribe from the spam basket, and here's what he or she had to say:

"Listen, you might want to pack a few of your things together before going to bed. The former bishop of Turkey will be coming tonight, along with six to eight black men. They might put some candy in your shoes, they might stuff you into a sack and take you to Spain, or they might just pretend to kick you. We don't know for sure, but we want you to be prepared." 

Where are you getting this crap? 

Dearie me, you silly goose. Incoherent and seemingly incapable of reading. Why we got this from David Sedaris, don't you know, and you too can get it by downloading this pdf here.

He's very popular in The New Yorker, though that piece was published in Esquire, and he's a humorist (no need to mention he's gay for fear of inflaming your prejudices). Why you can even cop David Sedaris reading the story live at Carnegie Hall on YouTube here.

Did you miss the bit about the slaves?

Don't get so paranoid. He sends up Michigan too ...

Now we know the Dutch are reputed to lack a sense of humour - yes, the pond has spent many a bizarre cross-cultural hour watching Dutch sitcoms. It must be like a Dutch person forced to endure Paul Fenech doing his pizza routines on SBS. Completely inexplicable.

But deep down we're all Algonquin Hotel lovers aren't we? Why even those trashy Warholians and their downmarket Chelsea Hotel fixation know when they're licked.

Settle, Nabokov back in your cage.

Never mind, do go on indignant (possibly Dutch) person:

It must be hard to live in your world, because in mine Sinterklaas is a holiday kids spend months looking forward to, preparing for, and then having a blast for the week or so it lasts. It has candy, presents, and some weird dressed dudes handing them out. What's not to love?

And yea, sure, the dudes(or dudettes) are black, hence the name ZWARTE Piet. Wouldn't make much sense to have that name if they had any other color. Not that it's a natural black color, or that it's referenced in a negative way anywhere. Except by people like you who insist on making it a racial matter. 

When Sinterklaas arrives, go out in the street and look around. You'll see white, black, asian kids. Muslims, atheists and Christians alike... Is it really weird for the Dutch to defend a tradition that makes kids all across the country happy?

Dude, or dudette - the pond is, as ever gender blind - we live a normal life here. Just like the greatest dude of all:

Oh, the usual. I bowl. Drive around. The occasional acid flashback. 

It's not hard to live in this world at all.

But here's the flash from the flashback. The dudes and dudettes aren't black, they're in black face.

And black face is common and garden racist. It was racist when they were doing it in vaudeville, and in silent films, and on Broadway, and in the talkies, and yes, gloriously, when poor old Ed Devereaux had to don a bit of blackface to star in Journey out of Darkness, and never mind that we had Kamahl dressed up as an Aborigine too:

You see, it's nothing personal. All the dominant cultures have done blackface for yonks. Why we even offered up Michael Pate to play an Indian, because when he wasn't  playing a Crawfords cop, he looked kinda funny in Hollywood. Kind of exotic, alien, foreign...

Heck the pond grew up in a country town where the blacks where herded into a ghetto, and in school their children were consigned to a portable across the oval, yet nobody thought twice about having a blackboy in the garden:

This fear of the alien and the other bobs up everywhere. The pond recalls fondly being told by both Chinese and Japanese executives, in unguarded moments, that gaijin - Gwai Lo - spell it and say how you will - stank to high heaven because they ate too much dairy food.  

You can just imagine the pond's pleasure to read that China is now the number one Kiwi milk importer. The stinking Chinese ...

You see, we all grow up conditioned to fear the different and the other, and for a long time the Dutch had quite a tidy empire - no doubt you wander in to check out how grand it was from time to time at the Amsterdam museum, and the Rijkmuseum. Though we note that it seems Zwarte piet seems to have taken a powder and been kicked off the front page:

Look it's nothing personal. The pond loves the Dutch and their peppermints and especially their hot chocolate.

But if you talk to any sensible Dutch person, at least the ones to the left of Geert Wilders, and thankfully now that's most of the country, they know that Sinterklass is racist in origin, at least as far as the Zwarte Pieten routine goes. Most get it, though generally helps if they've travelled and see how things go down in other parts of the world. Like they've spent a half hour in Mississippi or back of Bourke ...

It's okay. Santa Claus is also a sexist. Poor old Ms Claus is always out in the kitchen whipping up a scone, a lamington, and a lovely sponge cake with cream ... when she's allowed to exist at all, since many push a bachelor Claus routine, too busy to bother with an interfering woman.

The Dutch have been fed their own vision of this nonsense - a queasy mix of superstition and Xianity - in much the same way as Australians have been fed the routine that it's all the fault of the pesky blacks. Or Americans thinking that showing a picture Obama with a watermelon in his paws or dressed as an African witch-doctor is just a bit of satirical fun.

Now I know you might be thinking it's a bit more complicated than that. Like the Dudester himself, who found thinking a little hard:

This is a very complicated case, Maude. You know, a lotta ins, a lotta outs, a lotta what-have-yous. And, uh, a lotta strands to keep in my head, man. Lotta strands in old Duder's head. Fortunately, I'm adhering to a pretty strict, uh, drug regimen to keep my mind, you know, uh, limber.

But it's not that hard. Limber up.

Just think of Xmas as a devious alliance of the mighty Xian retail industrial military complex, which might or might not involve black helicopters on any given day, but which certainly involves squawking geese at Faux Noise.

Then you might realise that Xmas Dutch style is fucked, but no more fucked than Black Friday in America, or the run up to Xmas in Australia, as Liberal politicians work out the very best way to pander to Harvey Normal with GST just because he didn't have the first clue about online shopping.

Or is that Hardly Norman? The pond gets terribly confused at Xmas time, especially when the angry Sydney Anglicans berate people to buy their books and hand over their credit cards, while telling them to abhor filthy lucre.

You see, the Dutch have been fed this sort of stuff for generations, and have long had a taste for it, in the same way as the Chinese have now developed a taste for milk.

If you can't see that, you really need to get out a bit. And don't give the pond any of that crap about Muslims and atheists and whites prancing around in glee and happy harmony.

The Dutch still have a few issues to sort out. We won't mention the Jews in World War II - that's below the belt and unfair, a bit like mentioning the Stolen Generation at a Liberal party meeting. Or Australia sending boat people to remote locations.

Sure it's settled down since Wilders has dropped in popularity, but even now, who'd have imagined that a trip to Lelylaan is still seen as some kind of journey to the Islamic dark side?

Now we do apologise for the Dutch being the first to get involved in the pond's war on Xmas, but down below, just for fun, unless you happen to be black, we've thrown up a little of the nonsense surrounding a Dutch Xmas ...

Sorry for the extended tour  - weird shit dude.

Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos.

Yep, Due, say what you want about the tenets of Zwarte Piet, at least it's a fucking ethos ...

Not to worry, the pond has to think of anguished Dutch hits, and the ongoing war on Xmas everywhere, and right at the end, you can have a drink on the pond. Why not don black face to make it go down better? And do get out a bit dude ... I mean, David Sedaris went to live in West Sussex, England, in search of comedy ... and no doubt found plenty.

After all, it'll soon be Xmas, a pagan festival, but sssh, don't tell anyone, it gets the Xians and the Pellists and the angry Sydney Anglicans and the Murdochian Foxians so agitated ...