Dutch Birth Customs, 1902
A birth is naturally an occasion that calls for very festive celebration. When the child is about a week old, its parents send round to all their friends to come…
From: 1902 C.E. To: 1902 C.E.
Location: The Netherlands
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Dutch Life in Town and Country by P. M. Hough, 1902.
A birth is naturally an occasion that calls for very festive celebration. When the child is about a week old, its parents send round to all their friends to come and rejoice with them. The men are invited op een lange pyp en een bitterje, the women for the afternoon op suikerdebol. At twelve o'clock the men begin to arrive, and are immediately provided with a long Gouda pipe, a pouch of tobacco, and a cut-glass bottle containing gin mixed with aromatic bitters. While they smoke, they talk in voices loud enough to make anyone who is not acquainted with a farmer's mode of speech think that a great deal of quarrelling is going on in the house.
This entertainment lasts till seven o'clock, when all the men leave and the room is cleared, though not ventilated, and the table is rearranged for the evening's rejoicings.
Dishes of bread and butter, flat buttered rusks liberally spread with muisjes (sugared aniseed—the literal translation is "mice"), together with tarts and sweets of all descriptions, are put out in endless profusion on all the best china the good wife possesses. For each of the guests two of these round flat rusks are provided, two being the correct number to take, for more than two would be considered greedy, and to eat only one would be sure to offend the hostess.
Eating and drinking, for Advocate borrel (brandy and eggs) is also served, go on for the greater part of the afternoon. The midday meal is altogether dispensed with on such a day, and, judging by appearances, one cannot say that the guests look as if they had missed it!
It is quite the national custom to eat rusks with muisjes on these occasions, and these little sweets are manufactured of two kinds. The sugar coating is smooth when the child is a girl, and rough and prickly like a chestnut burr when the child is a boy; and when one goes to buy muisjes at a confectioner's he is always asked whether boys' or girls' muisjes are required. Hundreds-and-thousands, the well-known decoration on buns and cakes in an English pastry- cook's shop, bear the closest resemblance to these Dutch muisjes.
When a little child is born into a family of the better classes, the servants are treated to biscuits and "mice" on that day; while in the very old-fashioned Dutch families there is still another custom, that of offering Kandeel, a preparation of eggs and Rhine wine or hock, on the first day the young mother receives visitors, and it is specially made for these occasions by the baker (nurse).
Hough, P. M. Dutch Life in Town and Country. G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1902.
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