Prettige Paasdagen! Happy Easter

The sun is shining. The birds are tweeting. It’s Spring and like the Dutch we are taking full advantage of the Sun who is bringing us 22˚C plus days. Long walks to the beach and through the dunes between Scheveningen and Kijkduin. Cycling everywhere and sitting outside facing directly into the sun at the pub and cafes, hoping to brown our blinding white limbs.

It’s also Easter or Pasen in Dutch, which makes it’s presence known via what’s in store at the shops. In the last week there have been beautiful Easter chocolates in egg and duck shapes, little meringues and sweets in the shops. And also Easter breads or Paasstol, a traditional Dutch sugary fruit bread with sticky almond paste. To spread on the stol, there are butter pats sculpted into little animals. 

From our visit to Prague I had bought some traditional Czech hand-painted hollow eggs. In The Hague, shop-windows have been featuring pussy willow branches with decorative eggs hanging off their branches, so I copied and bought some paastaken (Easter branches) to decorate with my pretty Czech eggs. Apparently the decorated Easter willow branch is only more recently popular in The Netherlands but has a longer tradition in Germany and Eastern Europe. A Polish fellow explained to me recently that on Easter Monday in Poland, it is the custom for boys and men to take to the streets with said willow branches and set upon girls and women whipping and spanking them with the tree branches. Crazy Poles!

In Holland at Easter, they are crazy for Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion. It’s performed in a hundred venues across the country annually on Good Friday with double orchestras, double choirs and soloists. The Prime Minister and cabinet always attend the concert at Naarden in Holland’s north. It is a major J S Bach composition that puts the Gospel of Matthew, Chapters 26 and 27, the story leading up to Christ’s crucifixion, to music. First performed in Leipzig, Germany, on Good Friday in 1727; in Holland, it has been an annual tradition from 1899. We saw the Residentie Orkest (The Hague Philharmonic) perform the piece at the Dr Anton Phillipszaal in The Hague with the Netherlands Chamber Choir and a Dutch youth choir with boys decked out in sailor suits. The concert hall was packed and many audience members brought along their own texts to follow the story. Of course the text is in German, but a translated text might have been helpful for us - the work is about three hours long! Nevertheless the music was rich and beautiful. With two choirs and orchestras, the sound literally moved around the concert hall. And there were some beautiful parts such as ”"Ebarme Dich, Mein Gott" (Have Mercy on me, my God) with violin. There are no drums or brass in the orchestras, just organ, strings, woodwind and the superb voices.