Sint Martin’s Day...

While we opted not to go trick or treating in Wassenaar this year, we were happy to go out for Sint Martin’s Day on November 11th with David and Andrew in Heemstede to celebrate the saint who gave half of his cloak to a beggar before the city gates on a cold winter’s day. Traditionally children make lanterns, but ours were store-bought. Similar to Halloween, the kids go door-to-door and receive candy, but in this case they earn their reward by singing traditional songs. There were lots of comments about the cute English accents while the kids sang in Dutch:

Saint Martin, Saint Martin,
The cows have tails,
The girls are wearing skirts,
Saint Martin is arriving now.

Sounds pretty silly in English, but apparently rhymes nicely in Dutch.