No lights along the doors for Saint Martin’s Day this year
Collecting buckets full of sweets on Saint Martin’s Day will be a little difficult this year. The North Holland North safety region advises parents not to let their children go door to door on 11 November to sing songs and collect sweets. The reason is – of course – the growing number of coronavirus infections in the region.
If you don’t live in a province where Saint Martin’s Day is celebrated, you may now be blinking in confusion: what? On 11 November, children in North Holland and parts of Utrecht, Limburg and Groningen go door to door with a homemade lantern, singing songs in exchange for a sweet. An old tradition that is a little like Trick or Treat at Halloween. This year, it is not wise to go out, say the advisers of the North Holland North safety region.
One-and-a-half metres’ distance
In Groningen, children are allowed to go door to door, the safety region there says. However, the singing children must keep a distance of one and a half metres, and people with symptoms should not open the door.
Sweets on a snow shovel
In general, parents are not happy. What difference does it make? Children aren’t contagious anyway, they respond on Facebook. They do not even have to wear a face mask in the school playground. And people say they can hand out the sweets to the children using a snow shovel with a one-and-a-half-metre handle. Creative! Still, some people are being more cautious: the children won’t suffer if there is no Saint Martin’s Day for once, and if singing is not allowed in churches and choirs, the traditional Saint Martin’s Day songs could also pose a risk, right? Fortunately, we still have two weeks until Saint Martin’s Day…
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Source: nu.nl
