The last few days of November give us a few holidays that we all know about, Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Hanukkah and for some people the beginning of Christmas spirit. But what if I told you about one that nobody brought up or celebrated back on Nov. 29, at least in the United States. This is Sint Pannekoek.
Sint Pannekoek which translates to Saint Pancake, is a “holiday”, or should I say, a joke holiday that originated in The Netherlands where it is most celebrated. On this holiday, people who celebrate will hold a meal eating pancakes and additionally also put pancakes on their heads. In many ways, the holiday is like a joke cult as it gained a following due to the works of cartoonist and writer Jan Kruis who invented the holiday in 1986.
Kruis was born in 1933 in the Netherlands and is best known for creating the comic strip Jack, Jacky, and the Juniors (Jan, Jans, en de Kinderen in Dutch) which has been running since 1970. He was also awarded the Order of the Netherlands Lion in 1996 which is one of the highest honors one could receive from the Dutch monarchy.
A 1986 strip of Jack, Jacky and the Juniors is where Sint Pannekoek originated from. The story is that the grandfather character named Gerrit wanted to stop eating beans every day for dinner and remembered an old story from when he was younger where the mother of the house makes pancakes for dinner and before the father of the house walks in, everyone in the house puts a pancake on their head and shouts, “Dear father, we wish you a happy and blessed Saint Pancake.” The family then imitates the old story and shouts the same line to the father of the house, Jack while wearing a pancake on their heads.
The holiday wasn’t celebrated much until Kruis reintroduced the Sint Pannekoek storyline nearly three decades later in 2015. This story was named, “The Gospel of Sint Pannekoek” and takes place in twelfth century Netherlands where it follows a group of monks eating at a dinner table on a cold and windy November night. Pancakes are served and everyone is happy and jubilant except for the Old Abbot whose head is freezing uncomfortably. One of the monks who also happens to be named Gerrit places the Abbot’s pancake on his head to warm him up despite that now he couldn’t eat it. Then an angel appears and drops a pancake on Gerrit’s head to the shock of the other monks. What makes it more special is that Gerrit would later become a Saint.
As a result of the re-emergence of the Sint Pannekoek storyline, many people across the Netherlands began to celebrate the joke holiday every Nov. 29 and would post pictures of themselves with a pancake on their head and others would make a wish to the saint. Unfortunately, Kruis passed away in 2017 at the age of 83, but his legacy still lives on with this holiday that he created which has created a cult following.
The holiday has gained more traction in recent years and some in the international world have highlighted this silly holiday. Maybe one day in the future, we could see Sint Pannekoek becoming a part of the stretch of holidays towards the end of November, and maybe next year more people around the world will go around with pancakes on their heads.
