A celebration of the children who bring the Holland, Michigan, Tulip Time Festival to life (as appeared in The Holland Sentinel online 4/29/19 and in print 4/30/19)
https://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinion/20190429/my-take-ode-to-kinder-dutch-dancer
By Abby Warmuth
As a parent, signing up your kids for extracurricular activities is part of the job. Sometimes a little research about what one is getting into would be, well, helpful if not extremely wise. We live in Holland, a small town on Lake Michigan populated, not surprisingly, by descendants of Dutch immigrants. The phone book here (yes, there are still some that appear now and then) is filled with many names with double A’s and lots of Van-this and De-that’s.
Each year as spring finally arrives, so do the tourists. This is because there is an amazing effort put on by the city for Tulip Time. Each fall, hundreds of volunteers dig up thousands of “old” tulip bulbs and plant new ones in downtown. There are early blooming, mid-blooming and late-blooming tulips. There are short, medium and tall tulips. Purple, white and orange tulips. An astounding amount of thought is given to increasing the odds that at least some tulips are blooming during the festival. Some years, this doesn’t work out, hence the “Stem Fest” of 2012. This year, there were certainly doubts about blooming potential with winter claiming an extra month from spring. However, just days before the first dancing would begin, the inaugural tulips popped open and the parade of color began.
Dancing, you ask. Well, yes. In addition to parades, food carnival rides and entertainment spanning from flower arranging to a Beach Boys concert, a great part of the weeklong festival involves Dutch dancing performances. Elementary, middle and high school students from around the surrounding area (“Zeeland” for instance, another Dutch colony) brave the ice and snow to dance practice starting each February.
If dancers (or their parents) are lucky, they find a used official costume for a bargain price under $100. What is official? For the Kinder dancers (third-fifth grade), this is the “Sparkenburg” costume. For girls, it involves an under dress of a floral material covered with an apron of a window-pane plaid and a black velvet hat. Oh, and of course, wooden shoes. If one is not “lucky,” then the costume price more than doubles and one is initiated into a process worthy of a general’s battle plan. There are official patterns for these costumes, seamstresses assigned to each dancer (if one does not have a sewing relative), pre-selected fabric choices, lace and button options, pre-sewing washing instructions, two dress fittings, a “hat purchase night”and a “wooden shoe purchase day.”
After all this, there is a final inspection to ensure that the length and fit of the dresses is correct and the top socks (a dancer wears from 5 to 14 pairs) stuffed into those wooden shoes are black. I am very pleased to announce that my daughter passed this Netherlandian exam.
How did we get into this, some might call, insanity? A very innocuous flier came home from school, “Would your child like to be a Dutch dancer?” My daughter did. And, living in Holland, it seemed to be a rite of passage to do so. I imagined my daughter 15 years from now in a job interview and the HR person exclaiming while reviewing her resume, “You lived in Holland! I went there for Tulip Time! Were you a Dutch dancer?” and her face dropping as she said, “No.” So, yes! We would be a Dutch dancing family. Because, I kid you not, this is a total family experience.
Believe it or not, learning the dance is the easiest part. For seven Saturdays, my daughter and her “Zeeland” group met at a local library and practiced for 45 minutes. They took home fliers with the words to the Dutch song on it, listened to audio clips to learn the words and that was it.
Fourteen performances. FOURTEEN. Plus most of them involved navigating traffic and parking challenges. One month later and in the midst of the festival, after nine performances and with five left to go, I must say I am just floored at how much fun these girls have. I thought it likely that the other girls would all know each other, and that my daughter would be left out.
The reality couldn’t be further from the truth. These girls instantly clicked. They all LOVE each other. When they see each other, they literally grab hands and jump up and down in those “clomping” wooden shoes. They start dancing, make up nicknames for each other (“Puppy” is my daughter’s favorite friend) and have a ball. This is at performances after a full day at school.
Thank you, Holland, for this amazing experience for my daughter. Thank you, tourists, for enjoying it so much.