Gefeliciteerd!

 

In the Netherlands, one person can have a birthday and somehow everyone remotely connected to them gets congratulated for it.

Me: “Why do Dutch people congratulate absolutely everyone at a birthday party?”

Wife: “Well, because they’re family.”

Me: “But they haven’t done anything.”

Wife: “What do you mean?”

Me: “It’s not their birthday.”

Wife: “Oh I don’t know why.  We just do. Now stop asking silly questions and go and congratulate everyone.”

Birthdays in the Netherlands are curious affairs.  For one thing, people seem determined to make them last as long as possible. If your birthday falls on a Wednesday, you may have the party a week on Saturday.  Then another party a couple of weeks later.

Sometimes these parties are so much later that you can genuinely forget whose birthday you’re celebrating.

A child’s birthday is another level entirely.  It becomes a small military operation.  Except with Paw Patrol balloons and cake.

First there’s the actual birthday with immediate family. 

Then comes the party with extended family.  

Then the party with friends, normally involving a rancid, filthy soft play venue, mountains of chicken nuggets and enough chaotic screaming to make you want to spend the rest of the weekend sitting in a dark cupboard.

Then they have a celebration at school 

And yet another one at the after-school club.  

By the time it’s over, the child has been celebrating for three weeks and the parents have spent the equivalent of that month’s mortgage on bouncy castles, Pokémon cakes and enough chicken nuggets to feed half the town.

They also receive a mountain of Lego sets which you then spend the next two weeks assembling in what used to be your free time.

Lego dragons with 1,800 pieces and one crucial bit missing…

And then, just as you begin to recover, somebody else has a birthday.

So off you go again.

Almost every other weekend it seems that we’re on the way to yet another birthday party.

You arrive breathless and harassed, armed with a gift for the birthday person, possibly something for their partner or children, and, quite often, a plant, hastily plucked from a garden centre on the way.

Timing at these things is important.

You should never arrive early.  

And you definitely shouldn’t stay beyond the stated finishing time.   

Because, as we know, all the Dutchies need to have their potatoes on the table at 6pm sharp.

Being five or ten minutes late is acceptable. But if you’re very, very late, you’d better have a good excuse.  

It rarely happens to us, but when it does we blame the children. 

Especially as they’re still too young to openly question our version of events.

But arriving at a Dutch birthday is when things really start to get strange.

After the logistical operation of removing three children’s coats, shoes, hats, scarves and various strange objects they have apparently collected on the journey, you finally enter the sitting room.

And immediately congratulate seventeen people who are not having a birthday.

Even the person whose birthday you are supposedly celebrating isn’t having a birthday either. 

That was two weeks ago.

Three people at the party have since had their own birthday.

But never mind.

“Gefeliciteerd!”

Round you go.

The birthday person’s mother.

“Gefeliciteerd!”

Their brother.

“Gefeliciteerd!”

A cousin.

“Gefeliciteerd!”

Somebody you have never seen before in your life.

“Gefeliciteerd!”

The problem for me is that at most of these parties I have absolutely no idea who half of these people are.

So I work my way around the room shaking hands, smiling idiotically and saying “gefeliciteerd” to absolutely everyone.

Sometimes I lose track and congratulate the same person twice.

Nobody seems particularly bothered.

Perhaps they just assume they’ve earned another one.

And saying gefeliciteerd is only half the problem.

Because then you have to decide how to congratulate them.

Handshake?

Kiss?

And if it’s a kiss, how many?

The Dutch answer, of course, is three.

Which sounds straightforward until two people simultaneously have different ideas about which cheek comes first.

I once said goodbye after a party to a very good friend of my in-laws.

I moved towards what I believed to be the correct cheek, exactly as I had done many times before.

Only to meet her lips coming in the opposite direction.

It was too late to stop.  

Smack!

Right on the lips.

The expression on her face must have mirrored mine.

For a brief moment the room went silent.

It was a genuine tumbleweed moment.

Nobody ever mentioned it again.

But where does all this congratulating actually end?

Do you only congratulate relatives? Friends?

Apparently not.

“I’ve only come to fix the washing machine,” said a man sidling up to me with a desperate look on his face. “I’ve been here twenty minutes and I’ve been congratulated nine times, eaten two pieces of cake and now I’m trapped forever in this circle of people.”

“Oh?” I replied, momentarily disarmed.

“Well, um, gefeliciteerd?”

He sighed.

“Thanks.”

Ah yes.  The circle.

No Dutch birthday party is complete without everybody sitting around the edge of the room in one enormous circle.

It’s a sort of therapy group.

But with cheese.  

Nobody knows why these circles exist.

Nobody questions it.

There are sofas, dining chairs, stools, piano stools, children’s chairs and rickety old garden chairs all arranged in a huge ring.

Turn up on time and you might get an actual chair.

But be warned. 

New guests will keep appearing. 

So every few minutes you stand up and put down your coffee and cake as another group of strangers slowly work their way around the circle, shaking hands and congratulating everybody.

After a while, your face starts aching from all the smiling.

It’s a bit like a royal receiving line. 

Except you’re also guarding a dining chair with your life.

You can see the newcomers eyeing it up as they make their way towards you.

Smiling.

Shaking hands.

Saying “gefeliciteerd.”

But all the time you know that they’re quietly calculating whether they can steal your coveted seat the moment you turn your back.

Eventually they move on and you drop straight back into your chair before anyone gets any ideas.

Because this is the penalty for arriving late.

The circle is nearly full.

The good chairs have gone.

And they’re about to spend the next three hours perched on a tiny wooden stool too small for a toddler, knees somewhere around their ears.

There is, however, one advantage to arriving late.

Everyone is already there.

Which means you can get all your gefeliciteerds over with in one enormous lap of the room and then relax with your coffee and cake.  

But you then have to choose whichever remaining seat looks least like a medieval instrument of torture.  

Or the one that is less likely to give you a stiff back, numb bottom or haemorrhoids. 

Eventually, after all the congratulations, the coffee, the cake, the cheese, the accidental kissing and several hours sitting with your chin on your knees, somebody looks at the clock.

A quarter past five.

And the hosts have just got their potato peelers out.

Suddenly there’s purposeful movement all around the circle.

Coffee cups are drained.

Coats appear.

Children are located.  

Lost.  

And located again.

Goodbyes begin.

More handshakes and kissing.

“Whose shoe is this?” I asked as we finally arrived home and began unloading the sleepy children from the car.

I held up a small rogue trainer that belonged to none of us.

My wife studied it.

“Bram’s, probably.”

“The birthday boy?”

“The birthday boy.”

“How are we going to get it back to him?”

“Next week,” she said. “There’s another birthday party.”

I groaned, making a mental note to hide in the cupboard next week.