“To live is to war with trolls.”

                              - Henrik Ibsen

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and I’m taking you along a little detour to fully experience it. Never has Christmas spirit felt so counterintuitive and never has a dead horse been beaten with such grace.

Part VI: The Blacker the Pete, the Hotter the Take

I found out about the Zwarte Piet tradition on a chilly September morning. Our small group of smokers wasn’t too talkative that day, but we did not know each other well enough at that point to comfortably stand in silence. A girl, who would later become my friend, asked me if I knew about ‘the whole blackface drama’. I didn’t. She pulled up a picture.

It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. The image looked surreal. The beaming blackfaces dressed in old-timey garb. The picture must have been taken before the racial debates sparked because there was an obliviousness to it that compounded the entire spectacle. It was like staring at a page in a history textbook, an image that was far better suited for a satirical cartoonist’s rendering than full digital color.

I looked up, somewhat overplaying my shock. She laughed, clearly enjoying my reaction.

“We used to dress up as Zwarte Piet all the time,” she said. “Nobody thought it was racist.”

Since then I have heard similar accounts. The story goes: everybody thought it was normal, then the wave of social justice hit a few years back, and ever since then it’s been a contentious topic. As with any hot button issue, the discourse has become impassioned, sprouting protests and drawing a definitive line in the sand.

Here’s the thing: I’m an American. I’ve had a sense of white guilt since elementary school where we spent countless hours learning about the slave trade and segregation. When I see blackface, I shudder. As such, it is easy for me to label the entire thing disgustingly racist. And it is. But what I find far more disconcerting is the insistence on the fact that nobody knew it was wrong. It speaks to a deep cultural insulation in a society that has an international reputation for its ‘progressive values’. It reveals a traditionalism that stands at the core of this country.

I am not surprised that people are having a hard time letting go of Black Pete. If somebody told me tomorrow that the Easter Bunny was being banned, I would throw a hissy fit. I love that fuzzy motherfucker.

I am far more surprised by those on the other side of the issue. Those liberal sweeties who have now become born-again crusaders for justice. They talk about the entire thing as if it is ludicrous, despite having partaken in the tradition their entire lives. It has become natural for them to sneer at the other side, retroactively absolving themselves from any past wrongdoing. The entire discourse has followed the evolution of all similar farces. It has become a showdown between those unwilling to move with the times and those who enjoy feeding their ego with a sense of self-righteousness.

At the end of the day, Zwarte Piet has to be retired. There is no question about it. The apple has been bitten, there is no more blissful ignorance left to claim. It will never be pure again. Those who are trying to salvage the tradition are fighting a futile battle against history. From now on, Pete will always be a symbol of racial tension. The tradition has lost all of its coziness and joined the ranks of ‘political statements’. But everyone knows that. It comes down to the fact that people just want to yell at each other sometimes, and this controversy has given them the perfect opportunity to do so. And they’re just not quite bored of it yet.

Part VII: A Penny for your Thoughts & a Dime for your Silence

I thought it would be easy to transition from racial politics to something more lighthearted, but it has proven to be somewhat of a dilemma.

When I moved to Amsterdam I did not envision myself commenting on social issues. I envisioned myself smoking fat blunts and listening to vaporwave. The difference between outside perception of this city and its internal conservatism has become a point of fascination for me. The Amsterdam that people talk about, the haven of drugs and prostitutes, does exist. It just exists in a different dimension of time and space. In America, Las Vegas holds a very similar place in the national imagination. But this imaginary sin city only exists in the minds of those who do not reside there. The dealer might always win at BlackJack, but the player is the only one having fun.

As a tourist destination, Amsterdam fulfills its role, it delivers on its promises. Yet, it was naive of me to think that this would extend to daily life. The infrastructure that holds up the entire tourist market has been created by sober people, and that is why it hasn’t collapsed yet. Vegas would be a mess if all its residents got drunkenly married every weekend and Amsterdam would mutate into a monster of a different kind if it was 4/20 24/7.

The truth is you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Tourists live out their fantasies and the Dutch begrudgingly allow them to do so. It is an unspoken agreement of non-interference. ‘Amsterdam’ is a city just like any other but it is also an idea of itself. Like all other symbols, it exists in the eye of the beholder. The fantasy can exist until you start searching for the reality. It is the reverse of Wonderland, the rabbit hole takes you down into a civil society whilst the tea parties and mad hatters are all on the surface. It’s quite a neat trick, if you think about it.