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Holidays in Eindhoven
Halloween
The North American Women’s Club has a Halloween Party and the
international elementary school will celebrate it, but WHERE are the
pumpkins? Pumpkins, as Americans know them, can be purchased in
Belgium. Because there is no glut of supply in anticipation of
the holiday, expect to pay a lot more for them.
Ahh, the hunt for the Christmas bush! Well, actually, most Eindhoveners buy a Christmas shrub. For those of you seeking a tree that is taller than you, we recommend a backyard off Noord Brabantlaan. This street (afrit 31/McDonald’s) has two access roads running along either side of it between the freeway and the Evoluon. On the northwest access road, around Sinterklaas Day, a family will have about 10 tall trees for sale and with very reasonable prices. Look out! For some reason, the Dutch sell some trees with their rootballs still attached.
Christmas ornaments and decorations are the provenance of hardware stores in Eindhoven. Praxis will have a reasonable selection, but the best place we’ve found is the garden store Coppelmans Tuincentrum on Heikantstraat, on the south side of Waalre about half way between Waalre and Valkenswaard. Decorations become available around Thanksgiving time. Plastic trees are also available at the hardware stores. Christmas lights are available, even the icicle kind.
Wreaths in Eindhoven tend to be limited to about 16 inches a round. Wreaths up to 4 feet in diameter can be found in Amsterdam.
A Christmas must-see trip is a visit to the city Aachen on one of four weekends preceding the holiday. About an hour south of Eindhoven, Aachen hosts a traditional Christmas market, with traditional gluhwein, large ginger cookies, and tiny German ornaments.
If you have small children, you’ll want to know that Sinterklaas arrives in Holland three weeks before Sinterklaasdag, which is the 5th of December (effectively, this day is celebrated, but he arrives that night). For about 3 to 5 days BEFORE his arrival (counting backwards, three weeks plus three to five days…), at about 5:45 p.m. on a specific Dutch channel, they will be televising his impending arrival by boat. On one of the subsequent three weekends, he will make an arrival specifically in a nearby city. For example, he arrives by canal boat in Eindhoven. He makes an appearance at the Waalre city government building. He sleeps at a house in Nuenen. The dates and days of the week float around each year, and the information is always published in the local Dutch papers, so you will want to ask a local about when and where you and your children can “catch” a glimpse of his arrival.
Easter
Bring Easter baskets with handles, any type of Easter grass you prefer,
and Easter egg dying kits unless you are especially creative. The
Netherlands has lots of candy (though a little light in the jelly
beans department) but not a lot of "traditional" non-Dutch
Easter accoutrements.
Eindhoven is a southern Dutch city, in a part of the formerly Catholic region of the Netherlands. For this reason, it celebrates “Karnaval,” the equivalent of a Dutch Mardi Gras. In the Eindhoven center, they put up a big tent and play oom-pah kind of music. The Dutch people of Eindhoven are divided down the middle about this holiday. Younger adults see it as an opportunity to party and sing loud songs and generally get raucous. Older people think it is an excuse for lots of people to get drunk on beer, behave badly and litter. However, for children, there is a parade from Aalst to Waalre on either the Sunday or Monday, and there is the requisite dress-up opportunity on the Thursday or Friday before school closes for the week. Costumes are more “career” oriented (clowns, knights, princesses) than identifiable-super-hero oriented (Cinderella, Buzz Lightyear, etc.), but think of this holiday as that opportunity you’ve always wanted to get your kids to wear their Halloween costume one more time. If you managed to get rid of your costumes since October or arrived without them, costume shops will suddenly appear in areas like Kleine Berg straat about three weeks before the holiday, and Blokker will also carry some. Simpler, home-made costumes are esteemed as well.