Meet Zwarte Piet

LIZSAYS:    Meet Zwarte Piet. I met him in Amsterdam while walking though a shopping area when Christmas was on its way. Zwarte Piet was omnipresent. He was often accompanied by the regally dressed Sinterklaas. 

Evidently, Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas), shows up in the Netherlands on Dec. 5th, with  Zwarte Piet. 

Zwarte Piet is a very interesting character, he has been many things and still continues to perplex non-Netherlanders.

Sinterklaas/ St.Nicholas, it seems, came from Turkey via Spain along with Zwarte Piet tagging along.

Piet listens at chimney tops to espy who has been good and bad. He, then, distributes sweets to the good kids and can be the cause of a ‘birching’ (hitting with a switch/birch branch) for the bad kids.

Piet could be a Moor, brought from Spain as a slave.

Piet could be a freed slave, who decides to serve his liberator, St. Nicholas.

Piet can be a servant of the devil that is forced into servitude by the conquering St. Nicholas.

Piet could be a person of unspecified ethnicity whose face has been blackened from listening via chimney tops.

Piet is a frolicker, who is not mean or nasty, but does  spy and tell.

Piet is sometimes, a bit of a jester.

Piet dresses (as a page) extravagantly for a servant, gold earrings and golden trim on his red velvet clothing and a feather in his hat.

Piet is most often shown as a person in dark brown or black makeup, with more or less exaggerated features and curly hair.

Piet has been said to be derived from a couple of talkative ravens, who, by spying, helped Odin, the predecessor to St. Nicholas (the good saint) decide who was good and who was bad. The conversion of local myths into Christianity was a factor.
 
Piet, has also  been referred to as a freed Ethiopian slave, who was so grateful that he became St. Nicholas’s servant.
 

Piet is likened to Santa Claus’s elves, only black faced and not short.

St. Nicholas, supposedly, tossed coins into prostitutes’ windows to pay their debts, thus saving them from further prostitution. 

Piet took the hint and tossed candy to the good kids. He also, had the power to get the bad kids beaten with switches.
 

Piet can be brown or black with bizarrely red lips or normal human features and curly hair.
 

Zwarte Piet is supposedly a familiar character in Holland, Northern France and all of the Dutch colonies. I never saw him until I came to Amsterdam during the Christmas season.
 

I have never seen Zwarte Piet portrayed by a person of color.
 
(Most of the info came from Wikipedia, rephrased by me, the photos were taken by me in December 2011.)