Dear reader,
The Dutch are not particularly patriotic people.
You might disagree if you’ve ever seen how they behave at a football (i.e. soccer) game. There, the dominant color is orange, a reference to the royal family: the House of Orange. They’ll combine orange clothing, wigs, outrageous hats, and so on with touches of red, white and blue stripes, the colors of the Dutch flag. The combination is a cacophony of colors that hurts the eyes.
Nevertheless, I maintain that they’re not very patriotic, or perhaps I should say they’re quietly patriotic. Their love of country is tempered by their general sobriety: their modest and frugal way of looking at the world.
I was thinking about patriotism and Dutch flags this week on May 4, which is Remembrance Day, and May 5, Liberation Day. The placement of these two occasions next to each other strikes me every year as remarkably poignant.
Remembrance Day
Remembrance Day (Dodenherdenking) was first held right after World War II and, at the time, it was only about remembering Dutch soldiers and resistance fighters who had died. Later more groups were added: Dutch civilians killed in wars, those killed in conflicts or camps in Indonesia, and Holocaust victims. Today it includes any Dutch citizens killed in World War II or any conflict since then.
Remembrance Day is not a holiday, but every year wreaths are laid at memorials to the war dead and at Holocaust memorials. Here in Groningen, in a normal year, a silent procession lays wreaths at the Holocaust Memorial south of the city center and slowly walks into the center. At 8pm the country holds a national two minutes of silence, even to the extent that vehicles will stop by the side of the road.
Liberation Day
With the solemnity of remembrance out of the way, Liberation Day follows. It celebrates the end of German occupation of the Netherlands in 1945: May 5, 1945 was the day the capitulation was agreed down in Wageningen.
Liberation Day is a celebration: in many cities, concerts and all sorts of other events are held, and many people have the day off.
The contrast of the sad and solemn Remembrance Day followed immediately by the exuberance of Liberation Day seems to me an illustration of the Dutch Calvinistic tendency to soberheid, which translates as “sobriety” but has nothing to do with drinking. It means low-key, low-profile, modest. So mourning balances the celebratory, and neither is overdone or strongly expressed.
Flag-waving
While you will see fans at soccer games waving flags, the Dutch are much more “sober” about their national flag than Americans. In fact, while Dutch citizens can hang a flag whenever they want, government buildings abide by strict rules for when they can or can’t fly the flag. For the most part, Dutch citizens follow the same rules. The flag is flown on certain royal birthdays and various other holidays. On Remembrance Day, flags are flown at half-mast. On Liberation Day, they are flown at full height.
The effect of this is that you notice flags here, in a way that you don’t in the US. There, they become part of the visual background noise that we tend to filter out. Here, I notice flags because I see them so rarely. It’s a more intentional sort of patriotic expression, and the fact that not everyone hangs flags even on these occasions shows, again, the quiet patriotism that is tied up in Calvinistic sobriety.
This is not to say that the Dutch don’t love their country; they do, and they’re very proud of their accomplishments as a nation. They just love it quietly, not feeling a need to proclaim it.
I like that.
Have a great week!
Met vriendelijke groeten,
Rachel
P.S. I write about independent travel at Rachel’s Ruminations. Please join me there!