Monday was Queen's Day in The Netherlands, a national holiday with schools and offices closed. It is a celebration of the Queen's birthday, but it's a little more complicated than that.
As you might expect, Queen's Day actually began as Princess's Day in 1885 to celebrate the birthday of Princess Wilhelmina on August 31. It started as a holiday to promote national unity and the Princess was chosen as the celebrant since her father the king was fairly unpopular. When she ascended to the throne several years later the holiday was renamed Queen's Day.
In 1948 when Juliana took the throne the holiday was moved to her birthday, April 30. But in 1980 when the present Queen, Beatrix, ascended to the throne she elected to retain the holiday on her mother's birthday. The official reason was to honor her mother. The unofficial reason was that Beatrix was born in January and a holiday in Holland in January that doesn't involve ice skating would be a waste of a day off.
More questions will arise when Queen Beatrix's son, Willem-Alexander becomes king. He was born on April 27 so the date probably won't change. But will it be called King's Day? The Royal Family celebrates by visiting two towns each year to join in the local festivities. Veenendaal was one of the towns they visited this year -- you'll recall that is Joan's ancestral home. Too bad Don and Joan didn't visit us this year; they could have seen the Queen.
Queen's Day continues to be a day of national unity. As a show of pride, everyone wears orange, lots of orange. Readers may be surprised to know that I had to choose between 3 different orange shirts that I own. And none of them were t-shirts. Queen's Day is also known as vrijmarkt dag, or free market day. You are allowed to sell second hand items anywhere without a permit. This is especially encouraged among children. As a result kids line the downtown streets, throwing down a blanket to display their wares for sale. It is one huge garage sale all day. This is also accompanied by lots of food stands, drinks and live music. So it's a garage sale and party combined into one. No wonder it's so popular.
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| This is the end of the garage sale in Wassenaar. Hard to believe that Lori and I didn't arrive sooner. |
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| This swan's nest is along the bike path into town. As you may know, swans mate for life and the male shares in duties of incubating the egg. |
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| Swans are extremely protective of their nest. It didn't take this one long to come after us when we were taking pictures. According to Wikipedia, a swan attack several years ago caused a man to drown. |
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| After a short stop at the town garage sale we biked around some nearby flower fields. |
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| If you look closely you can see some yellow tulips among the pink ones. Kind of like volunteer corn in the soybeans. |
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