Sinterklaas or the power of propaganda

I knew it would come one day. A seven-year-old friend of my son’s planted a seed of suspicion. Sinterklaas (the bishop coming to Holland from Spain by boat loaded with presents – the true Santa Claus, as opposed to the one coming from Lapland) would not exist, according to rumour spread by the friend’s elder brother.

-          But you have seen him, haven’t you? – I probed whether it was time to tell him the whole truth.
-          Yes,  I have. But D. says that it’s a man like any other. Only in disguise.
-          Come on, would they make so much fuss in the whole country, if the whole story was rubbish?
-          Exactly – answered my son, relieved. – Of course it’s a man. Sinterklaas is a man. – he continued – And they wouldn’t have Sinterklaas-news on TV every evening, would they? If Sinterklaas didn’t exist, they would be called Sinterklaas-Rubbish, not news.
-          Exactly, that's absolutely correct. – I said, touched by his faith in the quality of information on TV.
-          But he wouldn’t take a naughty kid with him to Spain? – my son inquired further, as this is what Dutch parents threaten their kids with: if a child really misbehaves, he or she will be transported to Spain in Sinterklaas’s bag (going to Spain never sounded like punishment to me, but it certainly does to Dutch kids. The power of propaganda at its best.) – It just doesn’t make sense. The kid would maybe behave better for a couple of days, but then it would get back to normal. I think children simply should stay as they are. Good or bad. It doesn’t make sense to try and change them, does it?
-          That’s a very clever remark. – I said and thought that this was incredible insight for a seven-year-old. Even if this was just an attempt to avoid being sent to Spain.

It was a day otherwise full of surprising remarks. When by coincidence he learned about the death of a famous Dutch writer, J. Bernlef, his comment was:

-          Soon there will be no writers left, if they keep dying.

Exactly. They should just stop that. Death should be forbidden for writers.

Especially for such talents that utter somewhere in the middle of their book, a fragment that I cannot exactly remember, but it went more or less like this:

“It is as it is. If it wasn’t as it is, that would mean that things have taken an extraordinary course of action.” (Harry Mulisch “The Discovery of Heaven”)

Sinterklaas might take some of the evil ones to Spain with him in an attempt to turn them into someone that they are not. But that would be quite extraordinary. In fact, so extraordinary that it just cannot possibly happen. My mischievous little boy may sleep calmly. I know he is at his best the way he is. I won’t denounce him to the bearded bishop.