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Personalia
Dr. John Helsloot (1950) took his MA in cultural anthropology (Free University, Amsterdam) and is a researcher at the Ethnology department of the Meertens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. His dissertation was on the festive culture in a Dutch provincial town in the second half of the 19th century. Subsequently he specialised in the history of celebrations on the Dutch ritual calendar and published on the festival of St Nicholas - and the Zwarte Piet figure accompanying Sinterklaas -, on Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and Halloween.