Dutch Treat

On a weekday morning in early May, John Karsten, dressed in traditional Dutch costume, steps into the middle of Holland, Michigan’s 8th Street and begins swinging a heavy brass bell. A dozen white-gloved men and women, similarly dressed in old-fashioned outfits, follow him into the intersection. Their light wooden shoes make barely a sound.

As an eager crowd looks on, members of the group take turns bending down to run their pristine gloves over the coarse pavement. They shake their heads with collective disgust at the grimy results. The inspection takes less than a minute.

“By unanimous consent,” shouts Karsten, the group’s bell-ringing spokesman, “we hereby declare this street filthy. And we order that these streets be cleaned by the citizens of Holland.” The edict is greeted with cheers and applause.

Later, true to his declaration and in preparation for the afternoon parade, hundreds of Holland’s 30,000 citizens—children and adults alike, wearing wooden shoes and costumes of the late 1800s—turn out to joyfully splash pails of water onto the street and scrub it clean with stiff-bristled push brooms.

The cleaning of the streets is just one of many traditions that mark Holland’s annual Tulip Time festival, a celebration of springtime, flowers, and the town’s rich Dutch heritage.

Holland’s first residents were primarily city dwellers from The Netherlands. They arrived in western Michigan, on the banks of Lake Michigan, in the late 1840s, hopeful for the future and committed to their leader, Dr. Albertus Christiaan Van Raalte. But they were utterly unprepared for the swamps and woods they discovered. It is said that the settlers didn’t even know the correct way to cut down a tree—ignorantly chopping the trunk so trees fell toward them rather than away from them. American Indians in the area apparently took pity on them and offered the newcomers a practical frontier education.

A spirit of friendship and unity remains a hallmark of the town today, summed up by the Dutch word welkom (welcome). At no time is welkom more obvious than during Tulip Time, scheduled May 1 to 8.

The celebration originated in 1927 when a local high-school teacher suggested the community adopt the tulip as its flower in honor of Holland’s Dutch heritage. The idea took root. Since then, Tulip Time has blossomed to include flower shows, parades, klompen (wooden shoe) dancing, amusement park rides, and Dutch costumes, crafts, and food. The celebration is one of the largest flower festivals in the country, drawing about 1 million visitors annually who want a glimpse of the town’s more than 6 million tulips.

But Holland is more than a tulip town, even though the flowers, windmills, and Dutch-themed shops put the town’s ethnic heritage front and center. In fact, the town’s 350 businesses range from office furniture manufacturing and soft drink bottling to Hope College, a four-year, liberal arts institution. There’s even one surprising commodity: “Any Heinz pickle that can be bought in North America comes from our plant in Holland,” says Melanie Scholten, who grew up in Holland and now works for the visitors bureau.

Unfortunately, there’s one well-known Dutch business that no longer survives, even in Holland, Mich.: “Nobody really carves wooden shoes by hand anymore,” admits Rick Klompmaker, a hobbyist carver—his name literally means “shoemaker”—who gives demonstrations of the old-fashioned craft.

But whether they wear one-of-a-kind poplar originals or the modern equivalent from the DeKlomp Wooden Shoe Factory, one thing is certain—as long as their Dutch history is remembered, the people of Holland, Mich., will have unusually clean streets beneath their wooden-clad feet. At least for a day or two each year.

Robert Bittner is a freelance journalist in Charlotte, Mich.

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