To counter the winter days’ brevity of light and increasing darkness, the Nordic people invented Yule.
Yule festivities broke the dark’s stranglehold and its sometimes-deleterious effect on the human circadian rhythms.
One feature of that feast was large fires to make the darkness retreat, creating light. Christianity used this Nordic custom, saw it as a good thing, and incorporated that light imagery in their “Light of the World” Christmas message.
Today, the Dutch use light to commemorate the Canadians who fell in the Second World War. They light candles in official ceremonies at the graves in Holten and Groesbeek.
On Christmas Eve, local schoolchildren come to the Holten and Groesbeek Canadian military cemeteries in the Netherlands to light a candle in honour of every soldier laid to rest.
This act is both humbling and beautiful and is a reminder to us to show gratitude for the peace we enjoy, something so many around the world miss in living with wars and under suppression.
This year, 2023, the ceremonies will be fully public again as they used to be before the COVID-19 pandemic years that stopped the candlelight ceremonies. In those years, volunteers from the SVNF (Stichting Viering Nationale Feestdagen) continued this solemn tradition on their own, away from the crowds, and out of the public eye.
Nonetheless, even then, thousands of Dutch families decided that they would still light a candle in their windows to remember all the Canadians who participated in their liberation more than 75 years ago.
The custom of lighting candles traces its roots to Finland and was brought to Holland by Leena van Dam, a Dutch widow of a Finnish man. This custom has become widespread in the Netherlands. It is expected that thousands will be involved in placing candles this year.
The 2023 event, at Holten, will be held on Dec. 24 at the cemetery which holds 1,394, mostly Canadian, graves.
In 2022, approximately 100 schoolchildren, and more than 500 parents, gathered at the Canadian War Cemetery in Groesbeek to place candles on its 2,617 graves. The objective of this annual ceremony is to keep the memory of the Second World War current, and according to a Dutch official, “Never to forget the sacrifices these brave men made. To bring the light and the warmth to them as we do with our loved ones at Christmas time.”
Canadians, who celebrated Remembrance on Nov. 11, can rest assured that they and their sacrifices at liberating the Dutch will never be forgotten in the Netherlands.
Albert Wierenga is a regular photographer and contributor to BradfordToday.
