For centuries, Dutch children have received gifts on December 5, the eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas, but with time more and more people in the Netherlands are following the Germans in waiting until Christmas eve to exchange gifts. Many, too, have made a custom of crossing the border to nearby German cities to visit traditional German Christmas markets. Most galling to Dutch groups like the Saint Nicholas Society (Sint-Nicolaas-Gesellschaft), however, is the fact that growing numbers of people in the Netherlands are incapable of distinguishing Santa Claus from the German impostor, the "Weihnachstmann." Some Santa societies have been sponsoring Santa seminars to remind the Dutch of their national traditions. Others have taken more drastic recourse. In the city of Elst, for example, a local cultural group has been plastering shop windows with stickers warning "Remember when Christmas begins!" to protest overly Germanic holiday displays.

Though such tactics might be new, the sentiments behind them are anything but. Dutch literature is rich with examples of complaints about the German's unseemly ways of celebrating Christmas and descriptions of the celebrations of Christmas as "German." In the spirit of European cooperation and good neighborliness, some activists in the Netherlands have proposed moving the feast of Saint Nicholas forward to November to avoid overlap with Christmas. "some children suffer from "December stress" because the holidays follow so closely upon each other's heels," one "Nicholas expert" said.

From "The Week in Germany" - Dec. 15, 1995

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