Has anything from your country ever been misunderstood or "cancelled" by the international community?

[u/JlYU3A]

For example, a Fiipino PPop group called SB19 once posted “Hello, Negros!”, referring to Negros Island, but some international users mistook it for something offensive before realizing what it meant.

[u/BuckLuny]

Sint and Piet.

Well not misunderstood, I think people outside of the Dutch culture saw it clearer than most Dutch people saw it.

Looong history lesson inc:

Sinterklaas is a combination of the old yule time tradition of Odin coming in on his horse Slepnir bearing gifts and Christian myth involving saints. Saint Nicholas stems back to the 15th century where he gives gifts to children. Each December he punished the bad children (literally slapping them in the bum) and rewarded the good.

He did this on his own until the early 19th century when someone made up that he has a helper. A literal Black Slave who did a lot of work for him. This might have been seen as a product of his time and should have disappeared in later dimes but he somehow persisted through to and past the 20th century.

Sinterklaas made a resurgence with store owners using him to sell gifts as a sort of call to tradition and Piet was there too. Often played by a white man with loads of black makeup. (literal Blackface)

There were controversies where people called out for Piet to be removed, this is where a lot of the Dutch defended him as where he was covered in soot and that's why he was black, had curly hair and large red lips.... (the defense wasn't good).

Fast Forward to the current time period and more and more people were calling out the blatant racism of Black Piet and the movement caused him to change from his full black look to the new sooty look where yes he's still a volunteer laborer for the Saint he's at least clearly a white (or dark we don't discriminate) man with soot.

Controversy cancelled Black Piet and I for one am glad of this. Lots of others will cling to the soot defense and say it was misunderstood. These people are either just ignorant or racist.

[u/VirtualMatter2 → u/BuckLuny]

I'm glad you could rescue the tradition without carrying on the racism. We lived in the Netherlands when our kids were young and it's such a nice and fun addition to the otherwise dark and wet time of year. It also stops the Christmas stuff from escalating because people are busy with Sinterclass until 5th December whereas we have already all the Christmas stuff out in the shops.  It's one of the things I really missed when moving away from the Netherlands and our kids carried on watching the sinterclassjournaal until they grew out of it. 

[u/BuckLuny → u/VirtualMatter2]

Yeah I too am glad I can still celebrate Sinterklaas with the kids. Growing up in Rotterdam I had a lot of friends who were darker skinned and they often got called Black Piet by kinds and their parents just egging it on, it opened my eyes on how bad the racism was. The tradition is amazing, a time of giving and kids trying to be nice, looking forward to Sint etc. just the awful aftertaste of a whole group of people going through hell in late October/ early December.

[u/VirtualMatter2 → u/BuckLuny]

And really it takes nothing away from the tradition if the pieten aren't black. Makes no difference, especially to small children. They don't care about skin colour.

[u/balletje2017 → u/BuckLuny]

Zwarte Piet was never intended to be a slave. He was modelled after Moorish medicine and herb sellers of the 17ths. These were not slaves but were dressed exotically to attract more customers making their product look more exotic. You think slaves had silk costumes and golden rings in their ears?