On 5 December, according to Dutch folklore, a heavily bearded old man who’s been traversing the country on a white horse since mid-November will drop by every house in the Netherlands. He’ll leave presents for children who’ve been good. Those who’ve been naughty he’ll bundle up – literally, put in a sack – and take them by steamboat back to Spain.
On this evening – known as Sinterklaasavond (after the man Sinterklaas) or, cutting more to the chase, pakjesavond (presents evening) – gifts will be opened, poems penned by anonymous authors will be read out, and copious amounts of marzipan-based treats will be consumed.
Assuming that a shared geography means shared cultural norms, media editors will publish recipes for the season’s favourite dishes and instruct readers on what toys to buy. 19 days from now, when Santa Claus comes to town, newspapers from New York to Nairobi will get into the Christmas spirit. But just how do you see out the year when you’re a digital publication with members in over 130 countries?
At The Correspondent, we’ve been thinking about the challenge and the opportunity of serving such a dispersed community. On one hand, there are few cultural norms we can assume are shared. Our team embodies this challenge. It’s made up of individuals raised in diverse religious and non-religious contexts, stretching from Amsterdam to St Paul, Minnesota, and Lagos, Nigeria to London, England. On the other hand, there is great value in using one of our roles – that of convenor – to learn about how the world actually is by soliciting and sharing the texture of our members’ lives.
So here’s the ask: we’d like to know what your end of year traditions are. How are you planning to see out 2019, and do you have any rituals for bringing in the new year? Do they align or differ from those of the dominant culture around you? Is it even the end of year where you are?!
We’d like to pull a range of your contributions together into an article to be published in the coming weeks, so look forward to reading some 50,000 comments (if a saint dressed in a red cape and hard-to-miss red miter can sail into town on a steamboat, I can live in hope!).