Considering Christmas is just around the corner, I figured it would be appropriate to talk about the uproar and debate about what is going on in the Netherlands right now. There is an age old holiday tradition in the Netherlands, where Santa and his helper Black Pete walk the streets and hand out candy.

Black Pete is always portrayed by a white man in black face and hands out candy to the children as they parade down the streets.

The tradition's origins are not very clear, from what I can tell there are two predominat ideas of how black Pete came to be. The first is that Black Pete is black because of the soot when he follows Santa down the  chimney.

The other idea is he was based of a black slave in an old children's book.

Recently, there has been uproar in the Netherlands over whether the character is racist or not and if the age long tradition should be disbanded.

You can read the full article here: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/5/black-pete-foundracist.html

Is this racism? Or just a fun tradition? Personally, I love traditions but I think this one should soon be on the way out.