Christmas in the Netherlands as an Expat 2026

This is my honest, lived-in guide to surviving and actually enjoying your first Dutch December — what Sinterklaas is, why pakjesavond matters more than Christmas Day, how the Zwarte Piet debate has evolved, where to eat gluhwein in a cave, and why you need travel insurance if you’re flying home on 23 December.

Quick answer: Dutch families celebrate two December events. Sinterklaas on 5 December (pakjesavond) is the gift-giving night, especially for kids. Christmas itself (1e and 2e Kerstdag, 25-26 December) is a quiet, food-focused family weekend with very little gift exchange. Most shops close completely, public transport runs limited timetables, and the country effectively shuts down from 24 December afternoon until 2 January morning. If you’re new here, plan groceries, travel, and insurance well in advance — the Netherlands does not do last-minute December.

Sinterklaas: the holiday that confuses every expat

Sinterklaas is older than the Dutch Christmas tree by several centuries. The figure is loosely based on Saint Nicholas of Myra, a fourth-century bishop from what is now Turkey, and the modern Dutch version solidified in the 19th century when Amsterdam schoolteacher Jan Schenkman wrote an illustrated children’s book about the saint arriving by steamboat from Spain. That image — the steamboat, the white horse called Amerigo (now Ozosnel), the bishop’s mitre and staff — has stuck for almost two hundred years.

The Sinterklaas season starts in mid-November when the saint officially arrives at a different Dutch port city each year (the intocht), broadcast live on national television. From that weekend onward, children put their shoe by the chimney, the radiator, or the front door once or twice a week. They sing a Sinterklaas song before bed, and in the morning they find a small gift — a chocolate letter, a mandarin, a few pepernoten. The whole thing builds toward 5 December.

Pepernoten and kruidnoten are the spiced biscuits you’ll see everywhere from October onward. Technically pepernoten are softer and chewier (made with anise and rye), while kruidnoten are the small round crunchy ones that Albert Heijn sells in 500-gram bags. Nobody outside of food bloggers actually distinguishes between them anymore. Buy the dark chocolate-coated ones. Trust me.

Speculaas is the harder spiced biscuit shaped like a windmill or a Sinterklaas figure. You’ll find slabs of it at HEMA and in coffee shops next to your koffie verkeerd. Chocoladeletters are large chocolate letters — the first letter of each family member’s name — given on pakjesavond. They come in milk, dark, or puur (which is also dark, more or less).

If you’re invited to a Dutch family pakjesavond as an expat, congratulations: you are about to be tested. The hosts will write you a gedicht (a personal rhyming poem, often gently teasing) and bake you a surprise (pronounced “soor-PREE-zuh”) — an elaborate handmade papier-mâché creation that hides your actual gift inside. The poem is read aloud, in front of everyone, before you can open anything. Mine the first year was about my inability to pronounce Scheveningen. I cried, but in a good way.

Pakjesavond: 5 December is the actual gift night

Pakjesavond means “package evening.” It’s the climax of the entire Sinterklaas season and the night Dutch families give each other presents. It happens on the evening of 5 December, not 25 December. This is the single biggest cultural shift expats need to internalise.

A typical pakjesavond looks like this: dinner around 18:00, often something hearty and slow like stamppot or a slow-cooked stew. After dinner the table is cleared and someone — often the youngest who still believes, or an uncle in a cheap white wig — discovers a sack at the front door. Gifts are pulled out one by one, each with a name tag and a poem attached. The poems are read aloud. The surprises are opened. There is hot chocolate, pepernoten, and chaos. By 22:00 everyone is full of marzipan and emotionally exhausted.

For couples and adults-only households, pakjesavond is sometimes scaled down to a single “secret Sinterklaas” style exchange with poems and small gifts. For families with children under eight, it’s the magical night of the year — bigger than Christmas morning ever was in my American upbringing.

A note for expats new to the tradition: if a Dutch colleague invites you to celebrate pakjesavond, you bring a gift for everyone present, with a poem attached. Yes, even if your Dutch is terrible. Especially if your Dutch is terrible. The worse the rhyme, the funnier it lands. Budget around €10-15 per person for the gift itself and an hour of frustrated dictionary work for the poem.

The Zwarte Piet → Roetveegpiet transition

I’m going to be careful here because this is a genuinely sensitive topic and I’m a guest in this country. But you’ll see the debate yourself within your first week of December, so you need to know the basics.

Sinterklaas is traditionally accompanied by helpers called Pieten. In the 19th-century version and through most of the 20th century, the Pieten were portrayed by white Dutch people in full blackface, with red lips, gold earrings, and curly black wigs. The character was called Zwarte Piet (“Black Piet”). For decades this was treated as uncontroversial folklore by most of the white Dutch population.

Starting around 2011, sustained protest from Dutch Black activists, the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, and a growing number of municipalities pushed for change. The argument was straightforward: a blackface caricature performed at children’s parades is racist, regardless of how warmly it’s remembered. The counter-argument from defenders was that the soot on Piet’s face came from climbing down chimneys to deliver gifts, not from race.

By 2026, the chimney-soot explanation has effectively won as the official version. The national broadcast and almost all major city parades now use Roetveegpiet — a Piet with smudges of soot on otherwise normal skin, no wig, no red lips, no exaggerated features. Schools, supermarkets, and most municipalities followed suit between 2018 and 2023. Some smaller villages and private organisations still use the older portrayal, and you’ll occasionally see arguments about it flare up in regional newspapers in November.

As an expat, my advice: watch the national intocht on NPO once to see what modern Sinterklaas looks like, and if anyone tries to recruit you into the “but it’s tradition” debate at a borrel, just say “interesting” and ask where the bitterballen are. You won’t change anyone’s mind in a single conversation, and it’s not your fight to lead.

1e Kerstdag and 2e Kerstdag: the quiet days

Christmas in the Netherlands is not what Americans, British, or Latin American expats expect. There’s a tree, there are lights, there’s a meal — but the energy is completely different.

1e Kerstdag (First Christmas Day, 25 December) is usually spent with one side of the family. Lunch starts late, runs long, and involves multiple courses. There may be a small gift exchange, but it’s nothing like the wrapping-paper avalanche many of us grew up with. Some families now do a “stocking” or a single Christmas gift per person to please the kids who’ve seen too many American films, but it’s a soft tradition layered on top of the real one.

2e Kerstdag (Second Christmas Day, 26 December) is the other side of the family. Or it’s a long walk. Or a visit to a museum (many open at 13:00 with reduced hours). Or — increasingly common — a furniture sale at Ikea, which has bizarrely become a Dutch second-Christmas-day tradition.

What there isn’t: church for most people (the Netherlands is one of the most secular countries in Europe), early-morning gift-opening, or a dominant Christmas Eve service. Kerstavond (Christmas Eve) is a quiet meal at home for most families.

What Dutch people actually eat at Christmas

Forget turkey. Most Dutch Christmases involve one of three meal formats, and none of them are quick.

Gourmetten is the most uniquely Dutch option. Everyone sits around the table with a long electric grill in the middle (a gourmetstel), each person has a tiny non-stick pan, and you cook your own portions of meat, fish, vegetables, and tiny pancakes over the course of three or four hours. There are little ramekins of garlic butter, tzatziki, and saté sauce. The meal lasts until you physically cannot eat another shrimp. It’s social, slow, and the closest thing the Dutch have to a fondue tradition. Albert Heijn sells pre-portioned gourmet boxes that feed four to six.

Steengrill is similar but uses a hot stone instead of mini pans. Fondue (cheese or oil) is the third format, less common now than it was in the 1990s but still popular with some families.

For people who want something more formal, a multi-course dinner with wildschotel (game stew with red cabbage), rollade (rolled stuffed pork), or a whole kalkoen (turkey) is the alternative — but it’s a minority option compared to gourmetten.

On the bread side, kerstbrood or kerststol is the Dutch Christmas bread — a sweet enriched loaf with raisins, candied peel, and a thick log of almond paste running through the middle. Buy one from a real bakery (HEMA’s is fine but flat compared to a local banketbakker). Toasted with butter on Christmas morning, it is genuinely one of the best things this country produces. Even my Dutch-language teacher, who criticises everything, admits this.

Christmas markets: where to go, what to skip

The Netherlands does not have the Christmas market culture of Germany or France, but there are real options if you know where to look.

Valkenburg aan de Geul in Limburg has the most unusual markets in the country: the Gemeentegrot and Fluweelengrot cave markets are literally inside marl-stone caves under the town. You walk through tunnels lit with fairy lights, drink gluhwein at stalls between stalactites, and emerge an hour later smelling like cinnamon and damp limestone. Get there early on a weekend — by 14:00 the queues to enter the caves are 90 minutes or longer.

Maastricht is a 25-minute train ride from Valkenburg and easy to combine. The market in the Vrijthof square is more traditional German-style, with a small ice rink, a Ferris wheel, and food stalls selling vlaai alongside bratwurst. It feels less Dutch than Valkenburg and more like Aachen across the border.

Dordrecht hosts the largest open-air Christmas market in the country along its canals, usually the third weekend of December. It’s much more crowded than the Limburg markets but easier to reach from the Randstad.

Amsterdam’s Funky Christmas Market at Westergasfabriek is the cool-kid alternative — vintage stalls, craft beer, less gluhwein and more glühwein-cocktails. Skip the Dam Square ice rink unless you have kids; it’s overpriced.

A train day-trip to Aachen (Germany, 30 minutes from Maastricht) or Düsseldorf (1h45 from Utrecht) gives you the full proper German Christmas market experience without leaving the country for very long. If you’ve never seen a real Weihnachtsmarkt, do it once.

Travelling home for Christmas: the part nobody warns you about

Schiphol in mid-December is its own circle of weather-induced hell. Snow at Schiphol is rare, but freezing fog, wind from the North Sea, and aircraft de-icing delays are normal. December 22-23 are typically the worst days. If you’re flying transatlantic or long-haul, build in 24 hours of buffer.

The Dutch rail network also runs reduced timetables on 25 and 26 December and 1 January. Plan your Schiphol → home-airport leg with this in mind. Trains to Schiphol on Christmas Day morning run roughly once per hour instead of every 10-15 minutes. Last train of the night is often pulled forward by an hour. NS publishes the kerstdienstregeling in mid-November on ns.nl.

Travel insurance is the single best Christmas decision you can make. Your Dutch basisverzekering covers medical emergencies inside the EU, but it does not cover:

• Trip cancellation if you get sick before the flight
• Lost luggage (very common during peak December)
• Missed connections due to Schiphol delays
• Repatriation from outside the EU
• Winter sports if you’re skiing in the Alps over New Year

For shorter trips or if you’re newer to expat life with a smaller budget, SafetyWing Nomad Insurance is the cheaper option and covers you on a monthly subscription. It’s particularly good if you’re combining the Christmas trip with longer travel — for example, working remotely from your home country through January.

The extension of your Dutch basisverzekering through someone like the providers I review here does not generally cover trip-cancellation costs, even on the duurste packages. Read the fine print before you skip a separate travel policy.

New Year’s Eve: the first year of the national fireworks ban

Dutch oudejaarsavond used to mean hours of private fireworks in every street. That changes this year: the turn of the year from 2026 to 2027 is the first under the national consumer fireworks ban. Illegal fireworks will not disappear overnight, so expect some noise anyway.

What’s legal now: since 1 August 2026 (Wet veilige jaarwisseling), consumers may no longer buy, possess or set off fireworks, except category F1 novelty items such as sparklers (sterretjes) and snap pops (knalerwten). Ordinary consumer fireworks (category F2) are banned for private use, and bringing them in from Belgium or Germany does not get around the ban, because possession itself is illegal. Local associations or foundations can get a one-off exemption from their municipality to set off F2 display fireworks at New Year, and licensed professionals can still put on shows (rijksoverheid.nl, checked 24 September 2026). The details are in our guide to the fireworks ban and what is still allowed.

My survival advice:

• Take your bike inside on 30 December. Tyres and saddles burn.
• Close ground-floor windows by 17:00 on 31 December and don’t reopen them until noon on 1 January.
• If you have pets, get sedatives from the vet weeks in advance. They sell out.
• Check your municipality’s website for a professional show or a neighbourhood display with an exemption; that is now the legal way to see fireworks at New Year.

For more on adapting to Dutch winter generally, see my Dutch winter preparation guide for expats, which covers everything from cycling in the cold to dealing with seasonal affective disorder during the dark months.

Oliebollen: the deep-fried doughnut of New Year

Around 27 December, every Dutch city erupts in oliebollenkramen — temporary trailers parked on street corners selling oliebollen (literally “oil balls”) and appelflappen (apple turnovers). These are deep-fried yeast dough balls dusted in powdered sugar, eaten warm, traditionally on the last days of the year.

A good oliebol is crispy on the outside, fluffy inside, and not greasy. A bad oliebol — the kind you get from a kraam with no queue — sits in your stomach like a brick of regret. The AD (Algemeen Dagblad) publishes an annual top-100 list of the best oliebollenkramen in the country every November. It’s taken extremely seriously. Find your nearest top-25 stall and queue. It’s worth it.

Eat one (or three) before midnight on New Year’s Eve. Don’t worry about the calories. January will come for all of us soon enough.

Practical December checklist for new expats

If this is your first Dutch December, here’s the short version:

• Buy chocoladeletters and pepernoten from Albert Heijn by mid-November
• Watch the Sinterklaas intocht on NPO the third Saturday of November
• Confirm whether your work celebrates pakjesavond — many Dutch employers do a Secret Santa-style “Lotje” exchange with poems
• Book Christmas Day restaurant reservations before 1 November or accept that you’re cooking
• Confirm NS Christmas timetables before booking flights
• Get travel insurance through Cigna Global or SafetyWing if you’re flying home
• Move your bike indoors on 30 December
• Plan one day-trip to Valkenburg, Maastricht, or Aachen

For more on settling in long-term, my guides on retiring in the Netherlands, the single expat experience, Dutch language schools online, cycling year-round, and streaming services to keep you sane through dark evenings cover the rest of the picture.

For the official tourism perspective and event calendars, Holland.com’s tourism portal lists most major regional Christmas events with English-language descriptions and dates.

Final thought

My second Sinterklaas, I wrote a poem in Dutch for my downstairs neighbour. It rhymed kaas with jas and made absolutely no sense, but she laughed so hard she spilled gluhwein on her own carpet. Three years later she’s the person who waters my plants when I go home for Christmas. That’s what December in the Netherlands actually is — a slow, sometimes uncomfortable, often funny lesson in showing up for the people around you with a chocolate letter, a bad rhyme, and the willingness to look slightly ridiculous in public.

Welcome to your first Dutch Christmas. Buy the kerststol.