The Firework-Maker's Daughter

We have come to a land bountiful in its December-based traditions.

I guess a lot of countries are bountiful in their December traditions, but having spent all but one December living in New Zealand (and the other one in England, which, for seasonal tradition purposes I shall call, "Just Like New Zealand") I have never known the joy of a Dutch Christmas and New Year.

There are three great things about New Year's celebrations here:

1. Oliebollen
Literally translated, it means "oil balls", which is far better than the literal translation of the American equivalent, doughnuts. They are fried sweet dough balls, which may or may not be filled with dried fruits, and may or may not (but should be) covered in icing sugar. Traditionally they are eaten on New Year's night and some kind of oily sacrifice to the gods of the new year. You can buy them everywhere here, in pop up carts that seem to be purpose-built just for the three weeks of oliebollen-craziness that precedes the 31st of December. Goodness knows what they do the rest of the year - clean out their fat dispensers, I guess.

2. Fireworks
Holy hell. I have been to fireworks displays before. I've celebrated some New Years, 4th of Julys and Guy Fawkeses in my time. In my childhood, New Zealand had no ban on rockets, and I used to watch out my bedroom window in amazement, thinking that there were fireworks EVERYWHERE.

There were not.

I arrived back from the UK on the 31st of December at 5pm, and people were already letting off fireworks. OK, I thought, it's dark; that makes sense. People with kids are probably letting theirs off now, before sending the little scamps to bed so they can enjoy their oliebollen in a haze of drunken happiness. But they persisted, through 6pm, 7.30pm (when we left the house to attend our own celebrations), 9pm, 10.30pm, right up until the moment of midnight...when suddenly people actually let off their fireworks.

Oh yes. The preceding 14 hours (because apparently our late arrival into the country had merely given the impression of the fireworks starting at 5, when in fact they had begun at 10am) had been just a practice for what turned out to be an hour and a half of non-stop, crazy, jump-out-of-your-skin-because-of-the-noise fireworks. It was INSANE. People let off fireworks in the streets. Children let off fireworks in the streets. Small children let off fireworks in the streets. People built bonfires, sometimes in the streets. Where we were, people let of fireworks from their balconies, that is to say, holding a firework IN THEIR HAND and pointing it vaguely in the direction of up. Fireworks were thrown into neighbouring gardens, for little other than the pleasure of seeing a firework go off somewhere other than in their own back garden. As Mr N and I walked home, we saw a group of guys in the courtyard of an international company's headquarters, throwing fireworks into the alcove where the front door was, the resulting echo able to be heard from at least a kilometre away.

I have never experienced anything like it. And I'm sure the casualty departments never have either. Oh, apart from every New Year's Eve, ever.

3. Nieuwjaarsduik
This is a tradition that may or may not be a marketing ploy, since my grasp of Dutch is not sufficient to ascertain whether the tradition existed before the corporate sponsorship version in which I participated. The Nieuwjaarsduik is a chance for people to get down to their swimming costumes (or, in some cases, their birthday suit) and run into the North Sea.

All evidence I have found of the Nieuwjaarsduik has been the Unox-sponsored version that happens at Scheveningen Beach in Den Haag, where each person gets provided with an orange bobble hat at the beginning, and a bowl of Unox Pea Soup at the end. For the privilege of these attempts to keep you warm against the cutting wind of the English Channel and your own insane desire to throw off all your clothes in the middle of winter, you pay three Euros. Not a bad exchange, unless of course your friends miss out on tickets, so you end up standing awkwardly near a family of four, hoping they'll remember your face when the announcer mentions that they have a participant who has hypothermia and appears to have no friends, and when you actually do the dip and return, hypothermia-free, to dry land, you discover that the pea soup actually has meat in it and you are a vegetarian.

I did learn a new song though. It's something about a helicopter and it has fun actions that are made even funnier when you are standing with 10,000 other people in your swimwear at a beach on the 1st of January wearing an orange bobble hat.