Christmas 🎅🎄 is a very big holiday in The Netherlands, but on December 5 we will have another holiday first called Pakjesavond! 🎁🌙
With the rising popularity of Christmas over the years as a family holiday, Pakjesavond is really a children's holiday nowadays when late in the evening a figure called
Sinterklaas ("Sint Nicolaas": Saint Nicholas of Bari, the bishop of Myra) goes through towns as an old man with a big white beard dressed in red riding his horse over the roofs of our houses and dropping presents through the chimneys of kids that have been nice all year - or a lump of coal for children that have been bad (or even worse, beats them with a rod and takes them back with him to Spain where he stays during 11 months of the year...! 😱)
The historical Saint Nicholas and modern day Sinterklaas arriving in The Netherlands.
Sounds crazy? Or actually patially very familiiar...? That's probably because Sinterklaas is widely considered as the origin of North America's Santa Clause (a.k.a. Saint Nick, duh...)
So: what does this Dutch Children's holiday tradition have to do with papercraft?
Well, a lot of Dutch stores (especially supermarkets) allow children that have been good all year to leave one of their shoes in the store, so that the store owners (eh, I mean Saint Nicholas of course...!) can put a little present in it for when the children come to pick up their shoe again on December 5th. 🏪👞👟🥿🎁 😀
And well, I guess because it's pretty unsanitary to have lots of children's shoes in your store (and children would have one cold foot during the winter month of November...! ⛄) they usually give out special blank shoes as a papercraft template ("bouwplaat" or "knutselplaat") for children to color and decorate themselves and leave instead. 😊
Usually you can get the papercraft shoe template at the store where you can leave it, but sometimes stores also let you download it from their website. And of course you can also just put it next to the fireplace (or radiator nowadays) in your own home!
Don't forget to leave a yummy carrot for Saint Nicholas' horse in your shoe (and your wish list for Sinterklaas of course!) 🥕🐎
Download + build your own free papercraft color-yourself Saint Nicholas shoes and other papercrafts (from various Dutch stores):
(you can also check your local Dutch supermarket to see if they have printed template for you! 😉)
