By Isla Quinn
Dusk comes early in the Netherlands by the second week of November. That is the point of the evening. Children go out with lanterns they have made, ring doorbells and sing.
What happens
NL Times, a Dutch English-language news site, reports that children go door to door with handmade lanterns and sing for sweets. In some places, it names Venlo, there is a lantern parade that ends in a bonfire.
The Leiden International Centre, a service for newcomers, gives the same picture: homemade lanterns, a traditional song and sweets. I Am Expat, a magazine for the international community, adds the song titles “11 November is de dag”, “Ik loop hier met mijn lantaarn” and “Sinte Sinte Maarten”, and says households that take part hand out sweets, chocolates and mandarins. A fourth source, Euraxess, a researcher-mobility site, says only that “light is central to the celebration”.
The name
Sint-Maarten is Saint Martin’s day. NL Times and the Leiden International Centre both retell the story of a fourth-century bishop of Tours who cut his cloak in two for a freezing beggar. The Leiden page gives his dates as 315 to 397 and says 11 November is the day of his funeral. We tell it because the sources do, not as doctrine.
Where it is kept, and how widely
Here the sources disagree, and we leave them side by side.
- NL Times says the day is kept from Venlo to Almere and from Groningen to Haarlem, and calls it “increasingly popular”. No source we read measures how many families take part, so we give no figure.
Where the date comes from
Sources split on origins. I Am Expat says the festival began with the Catholic Church in France, spread across Europe, and also marked the end of autumn, the start of winter and the harvest. Euraxess says its origins are unclear and that each region keeps it a little differently. The Leiden page, for its part, says the religious connection is weak in most areas where it is kept, and that it is celebrated in parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany. All three can be right at once: a church date, a farming date and a children’s evening are not rivals.
One more legend, from the Leiden page only: Martin’s horse ran off one evening and villagers searched for it with lanterns. It says nothing on whether the lanterns were ever made from vegetables, so neither do we.
A beggars’ holiday
Two sources speak of an older character. The Leiden page says the day was historically a “begging festival” for the poor, who received extras such as sugar beets or bread to get through the winter, and that children once had the day off school. I Am Expat says it was called a beggars’ holiday until the early twentieth century and has been kept for hundreds of years.
A lantern, if you want one
I Am Expat says you can make a paper lantern or buy one, and that online tutorials range from simple to elaborate. The Leiden page suggests asking neighbours whether children in your street will be out, so you know how much to have ready. Neither source gives a pattern, and we add none.
Questions a buyer would ask
Is it a public holiday? None of the four sources says so, and we do not claim it.
Is it only for children? The sources describe the lantern round as a children’s custom. They do not mention adult events beyond parades.
What we left out
We left out the church side of the story beyond the name, sweets that are not named in the sources, and any list of towns that run parades beyond those the sources name.
Quick answers
What do Dutch children do on 11 November? According to NL Times, they go door to door in the evening with handmade lanterns and sing for sweets.
Which songs are sung? I Am Expat names “11 November is de dag”, “Ik loop hier met mijn lantaarn” and “Sinte Sinte Maarten”.
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