Pedicures, white asparagus and trips to heaven

I love May.

That reminds me, I must book a pedicure

After months of low grey skies, vicious cold winds and depressing drizzle in the northern hemisphere, May pops up, cheerful and promising. May is like the arrival of a favourite aunt at a dull gathering of your extended family. While no-one openly acknowledges it, everyone is anxiously and hopefully awaiting her arrival. When she finally bursts through the door, all cuddly and bubbly, sassy and bossy, everyone relaxes. She deposits armsful of fresh produce and homemade delights on the table, then with a sly wink and an irreverent hoot pops the cork from the champagne bottle. Within minutes, everyone is dancing and laughing and telling inappropriate jokes in front of the children, having forgotten how boring things were before May came along.

The arrival of Aunty May here in the lowlands not only brings promises of champagne, dancing and laughing, but also sunshine, greenery, tulips and (crucially for me) white asparagus. All are essential to the post-winter regeneration of the soul.

White asparagus - a special treat from Aunty May

Aunty May’s arrival brings unspoken secondary benefits too, including (but not limited to) the urgent undertaking of overdue pedicures, waxing and exfoliation , which to my mind are also essential for the wellbeing of the soul.

But one of the best things about Aunty May coming to the lowlands is that you know it’s holiday time. There are so many holy days at this time of year that I feel compelled to provide an (outsider’s) explanation.

King’s Day, 27 April – the warm-up

Fools in orange sequins and feathers

The string of Dutch public holy days starts a few days before Aunty May arrives in town with Koningsdag, a remarkable preparatory event that sees the entire country shrug off its dusty winter coat and replace it with a festive cloak of orange sequins and feathers.

The Dutch celebrate the monarch’s birthday in a bewildering display of intensely overt nationalism which somehow – possibly because most people look like circus escapees – manages to be as hilarious as it is inoffensive. It is a holy day in the truest sense of those words – it celebrates something that is sacrosanct, faithfully adhered to and widely revered. And by day’s end you see a lot of people bowing down, speaking in strange tongues and occasionally lying prostrate. It can be a very religious experience.

Remembrance Day, 4 May – a complicated reminder

The reverie subsides quickly and sobriety returns in time to mark Remembrance Day on May 4. In other countries it is known as Star Wars Day (“May the Fourth be with you”) or as Audrey Hepburn’s birthday (a woman well worth remembering in her own right).

But here in the lowlands, it is a day to acknowledge all those who have fallen, not only in battle but also in resistance and in persecution.



One of my favourite Amsterdam monuments, in memory of the women of Ravensbruck 1940-1945.
For she who went to extremes to speak out against fascism

While not a public holiday, it is a day that resonates strongly with the Dutch, who come out in force to contemplate their complex history. As an outsider, I am fascinated by what I see as a strange mix of survivor’s pride, enabler’s guilt, beneficiary’s gratitude and modernist’s resolve. In an attempt to understand it I (and a thousand or so of my closest Dutch friends) walked in the Mayor’s Silent March in the late afternoon light on Remembrance Day this year.


A slow and silent march, giving plenty of time to
contemplate my Dutch vocabulary

 
The march, which is a hauntingly silent holy pilgrimage, follows a three kilometre route from Museumplein to the national monument at Dam Square, passing several beautiful memorials along the way. The walk, led by the Mayor of Amsterdam and a couple of hypnotising military drummers, provides ample opportunity to remember the millions of lives lost and the incomprehensible resilience that has been shown in re-building this country over the past seventy years.

At 8pm, the country observes a two minute silence, so whether you are driving a tram, walking the dog, cycling from work, or as Ned Nederlander and I were, tucking into a meal in a restaurant with friends, you are compelled to stop and remember.

 

I harnessed appropriate thoughts for a large proportion of the two minute period, but because I am a woman with a short concentration span, I confess that my mind wandered during the last thirty seconds. At that point I became distracted, as I often do, by a word. It suddenly occurred to me that the Dutch word for Remembrance Day is Dodenherdenking which for someone with as loose a grip on the language as I have, can be crudely translated as “rethinking about the dead”. I was reminded, as if I needed it, of how much I love linguistics and how grateful I am for the sacrifice that the contemporary Dutch population makes in allowing me to butcher their language and participate in their culture.

Liberation Day, 5 May – freedom from seriousness

The following day, May 5, is Bevrijdingsdag, the anniversary of the end of the occupation of the Netherlands during World War II. It generates a significant change in pace and mood; it is celebratory and upbeat, and a great excuse for a party or at least a couple of wild and debaucherous music festivals. However, for reasons that only Dutch bureaucrats understand, Bevrijdingsdag has been declared a five yearly public holiday, including as luck would have it, 2015. So this year we were granted another holy day and another reason to love Aunty May.

Ascension Day , 14 May – a missed opportunity?

We have barely caught our breaths before we are hit with another holy day and another wonderfully evocative example of Dutch linguistic creativity. Ascension Day, a blessed public holiday in the lowlands, occurs forty days after Easter, therefore always a Thursday, marking the day when Jesus ascended to heaven. The Dutch refer to it as Hemelvaartsdag, which, at least to my simple mind, translates as Trip to Heaven Day. Pondering this recently, Ned Nederlander remarked that if Jesus had delayed his trip for just one more day, he would have gone to heaven on a Friday, and we would all have a long weekend each year. However, since He did choose Thursday, and giving due consideration to the potential for jet lag, perhaps in future Heemelvaarts Friday should be declared a recovery day and therefore a public holiday? Then again, the Australian government doesn’t even recognise Trip to Heaven Day as being worthy of a public holiday, so I should simply be grateful for a lazy Thursday, especially one with such a cute vocabularial twist.

Pentecost days, 24 and 25 May – pent up double-dipping

The Dutch do however grab a sneaky extra day’s break during the final fabulous holy days of May. The Dutch refer to this time, the fiftieth day after Easter when the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples, as Pinksterdagen. It is known as Pentecost in many other countries (as in pentathlon, pentatonic, pentagon ...get it? Multiples of five; huh, that’s clever). It is typically marked with appropriate Sunday church services, although it seems to seldom be celebrated with a public holiday. Additionally, the Dutch (with no biblical authority as far as I can tell) have declared the day after Pentecost Sunday to be worthy of a break from work and school, referring to it simply as “Second Pentecost Day”. It’s generally seen as a day to worship at the retail altar. In an even more far-fetched interpretation of Pentecost, the administrators at De Jongens’ school have declared the following Tuesday to be an in-service day. Not such good news for teachers, but an excellent win for parents and students wanting to get away over a four day long weekend with sunny Aunty May.

Opa's Octacost, May 18 - a lesser known holy day

Opa Max, Ned Nederlander's widely-adored father, turns 80 tomorrow. Most of his children and grandchildren gathered around him and Oma Hilary at a Sydney waterfront restaurant this weekend to celebrate. Sadly, neither Ned, De Jongens nor I were there to share the celebrations in person - regrettable proof of the tyranny of distance. But that will not stop us from celebrating the wonderful contribution he has made to all of our lives.

Opa Max casts his golden spell over the Netherlands

during a recent visit

He loves, supports, steadies, amuses, impresses, nurtures and gently guides us all. We are all better people for having Opa Max in our lives.

It is my firm belief that a public holiday should be declared in his honour.

Happy birthday Opa Max.