A festa de São Nicolau

Jan Steen painted this crowded Dutch household around 1665, on the evening of December 5, the feast of Saint Nicholas that the Netherlands still keeps as Sinterklaas. The custom was simple. Good children found treats in their shoe by the hearth, and bad ones found only a birch rod. The little girl in front hugs a bucket of sweets and a doll and will not share, while the boy on the left is howling because his shoe held nothing but the rod, and his family is laughing at him. Look to the back and an older boy points a small child toward the chimney, explaining how the saint got in. Steen was famous for these loud, slightly chaotic family scenes, and Dutch people still use the phrase a Jan Steen household for a happy mess like this one.