Dutch Circle Party Guide – How to Survive a Dutch Birthday
If you’ve lived in The Netherlands for any length of time you’ve probably encountered a Dutch birthday party, and if you haven’t you will eventually. It is inevitable. A Dutch birthday party can be best described as a ‘party’ that involves sitting around in a circle all afternoon and chatting while drinking tea or coffee and eating cake. Because of this they have become know as Dutch circle parties among a lot of people (expats and Dutch alike). Anyone who only considers a party to be a party if someone is passed out drunk in the corner, people are making out in the kitchen and the cops have been called at least three times is going to be sorely disappointed. Here is everything you need to know.
1) Gefeliciteerd and Arriving at the Party
When arriving at a Dutch circle party you will be expected to greet everyone, not just the birthday boy or girl. Don’t expect to get away with a general group, “hello,” either. You’ll have to make your way around the circle, greeting each person individually (with a handshake or cheek kisses, depending on the situation).
At this point it is very important to know that when the other attendees shake your hand and announce ‘Gefeliciteerd’ they are not introducing themselves with their name. It might start to seem like you are being introduced to a very big family (or that Gefeliciteerd is a more common name in The Netherlands than Smith) but they are in fact wishing you, “congratulations”. You are expected to congratulate them in return. Don’t make the same mistake I made when attending my first Dutch birthday party.
Guest: “Gefeliciteerd.”
Me: “Stuart. Nice to meet you Mr. and Mrs. Gefeliciteerd.”
All this congratulating happens because it is custom for the Dutch to congratulate everyone at the birthday party. It is not (as I later discovered) because they are unsure who the birthday boy or girl is (don’t try to be helpful by pointing). Family members will be congratulated for their connection to their Son/Daughter/Grandchild/Brother/Sister/Niece/Nephew/Cousin/other. Friends will be congratulated for being friends with their friend and neighbors will be congratulated for living next door to someone who is having a birthday. Every loose connection to the birthday girl or boy is celebrated.
2) Joining The Circle
The party will take place exclusively in the living room because that is where the seating has been arranged. Anything that even resembles a chair, sofa or stool will have been dragged from every other room in the house (or in emergencies the neighbors house) to form a circle. This is possibly because it is the optimal seating arrangement that allows for conversation.
Small side note; it does not technically have to be a perfect circle but I cover that in my post on Circle Party Closed Loop Theory.
Once you have successfully found a place to sit within the circle (not necessarily next to the people you arrived with and most likely between people you don’t know at all) you will be offered a drink and some cake. If you desire a drink with a little extra kick it is advisable to secretly conceal a hip flask of alcohol about your person. The strongest thing to be served at most Dutch circle parties is tea and coffee.
If all the congratulating from earlier has left you confused about who the birthday person is don’t worry, they are most likely the one who just served you tea and cake. In fact, they will be responsible for all the catering. They don’t get much of a rest on their special day. They even have to buy or bake their own cake.
3) Meeting the Family and Other Party Guests
The guests you’ll find at a typical Dutch birthday party are usually a mix of friends, family and other acquaintances. It is custom for there to be a minimum of 3 or 4 generations of family present (the maximum limit is only set by the average human life span). This makes it entirely possible to go from a conversation about life as a member of the Dutch resistance during World War 2 to another about which My Little Pony character is the best and why. It’s best to avoid getting these two conversations mixed up. Princess Twilight Sparkle was never part of the Dutch resistance.
However, since a lot of these conversations will be in Dutch and thus impossible for a non-Dutch speaker to follow it is best to find something of interest to do to pass the time such as; staring at a wall, listening to the clock tick, trying to guess how much Dutch ‘worst & kaas’ you can eat or simply going to your happy place.
4) Dutch Circle Party Surprise
However, you must also stay alert! As a non Dutch speaker it is possible to go from being unintentionally ignored to suddenly having the entire room focus upon you within a split second. This is usually because everyone is waiting silently for your answer to a question that you didn’t hear because you were too busy watching a bug crawl across the window.
It can happen because a Dutch attendee simply wanted to practice their English, ask you what brought you to the Netherlands or simply want to know the current prices of the UK housing market. Whatever the reason, everyone in the room suddenly wants to hear the English speaker talk and they never seem to realize what a shock to the system this sudden intimidating attention can be. Nor do they realize that testing us on our Dutch under the watchful eye of a room full of native speakers is not necessarily the most comfortable of situations.
5) When Does a Dutch Circle Party Finish?
But do not worry if you are outted as the only expat in the room. You will not have to suffer for long. Most Dutch birthday parties have a set end time at a very respectable hour. In fact, when most parties elsewhere in the world are just getting started a Dutch circle party is promptly finishing. If you are unsure when you should leave, don’t worry. The host or hostess will politely remind their guests it is time to leave by cleaning up around them.
PARRTTTYYYY!!!!!
- Find out more about the Dutch Circle Party by checking out these posts:
- How To Identify a Dutch Circle Party
- Dutch Circle Party Closed Loop Theory
- Children’s Dutch Circle Party
We’ve avoided these so far by being social recluses, although if you dating/married to a dutch person I imagine they’re hard to avoid.
Again, so glad our families are both out of the country. We do get sucked into a few of those parties but we are that couple that make an appearance, eat the good stuff then leave :P
Thanks for writing this. It’s absolutely brilliant and painfully acurate. After years of living in this country, I simply refuse invitations to these parties :-)
This is too funny and too true. In Australia it doesn’t matter how old the birthday boy or girl is, a birthday party is an excuse to drink as much social lubricant as you can and to eat cake ONLY after you have consumed your own body weight in barbequed meat and potato salad. I particularly feel anxious when fellow guests try and HELP me with my Dutch, by speaking exclusively to me in Dutch, and don’t pick up on my whincing and squirming that I’m in extreme brain pain!!!
Thank goodness for the ‘happy place’ without it I am not sure I would survive these things, even if we do keep our attendance of them quite minimal. Great post!
Dan Potter – They are and my girlfriend actually apologised to me the other day for having to take me to them.
Breigh – We try to do the same.
Dragonlady – Only if one is dropped by accident.
Jean-Baptiste – Smart man.
LizzeeB – I sometimes think they do pick up on it and enjoy it. Australian parties sound like a lot of fun. I imagine it being something like, “Here you go little Timmy. Three years old, it’s time for ya first beer.”
Heather – It’s great isn’t it. My happy place is greatly influenced by the magic roundabout. I don’t know why, I’ve never seen an episode but it is something about he music.
So far I have been soooo lucky in never having to do the circle birthday from hell. When I first came here my husband forgot to tell me that I needed to congratulate everyone in the room. I went in and sat down after saying Hello and learned after the fact what I should have done..lol
When I first moved over here I was invited to one of these. I was so hoping to meet, mingle and have a few beers. Uh oh nooo!. Sat in a circle, was offered coffee and cake and felt like a complete alien. Thankfully there was a guy there who spoke fluent English and detected my awkwardness. I told him I wasn’t used to these kind of parties and explained that we usually stood up, had loud music, no-one over the age of 50 and got raving drunk. He wispered that he had some wonderful Russian vodka stashed away and would I care for some. Oh yes I said. I sat getting quietly drunk by myself ignoring the weird looks I was getting from my boyfriends ex. Since then I have been to many of this nature. They don’t get much better but now I always come prepared :)
So, so true! I just love it when my fiance will RSVP for both of us at one of these hideous displays. Unfortunately for me I’m now past the required length of time to have any sort of English conversation, so am only spoken to in Dutch and am expected to respond in kind. So my happy place is relegated to the far reaches of my fantasy, only to be replaced by the brain pain LizzieB describes. Thank God I only really need to know Gezellig hoor and a couple snippets about football otherwise I’d be totally screwed.
And I now refuse to do the gefeliciteerd lap and just wave from the entrance. I have to embrace their idiosyncrasies, so they can at least do me this one favour!
Love it, great post.
Oh! This was *brilliant*.
4 days after I arrived 8 years ago it was my partners mother’s birthday. I thought it would be a ‘fun’ opportunity to meet his family. He actually insisted that it would be okay if I didn’t go- that maybe it would be too much. I had ‘party’ in my head- food, drinks, jovial conversation, dare I say I thought there might even be…music. I was horrified! Subsequent Circles from Hell over the next year found me at some point during the day in the WC trying not to cry, telling myself I just had to get through it and it was not worth a suicide attempt. It was not until I met other expats married to Dutchies that I realized it was national- not just some freaky way of doing things in my husband’s family!
AGH!!!!! Now at least I speak Dutch…
The trick is to only go to parties that begin after dinner (so for us Dutch, say after seven), where we still sit in a circle but have beer, wine and snacks. Mind you, it will probably still be a bit tame compared to other countries :)
Haha! Okay, maybe this is something only people from Holland do, and not the Netherlands in general, because in my world the parties are always without chairs, and with loads of alcohol and snacks. Sure the occasional circle party occurs, but these are generally for family (with all the grandparents etc). The real parties are for friends only, not a family member in sight. So perhaps you are saying you’ve never been to a real party only to the obligatory meet ‘n greet with the folks… Hmmm. :P *sporting a halo*
I must be some twisted freak then – I seem to be the only expat that enjoys these things! Admittedly, the first one I went to (for my girlfriend) waas a culture shock, but only because of the congratulations directed at me – I was first in line for them as I was on door-opening duty. Standing there smiling, thinking “thank you, but it’s not my birthday – she’s in the lounge…”. Since then, I’ve moved to The Netherlands (was ‘just visiting’ till 2 years ago) and been to plenty more since then – 2 of my own included! Got to admit I’m a sucker for some of the ‘hapjes’ (little bites) that are always served – I tend to scoff way more than my fair share of the ghurkins wrapped in ‘Parisian sandwich meat’. And with a possible maximum of 15 of these a year (though some end up being joint do’s), that’s a lot of hapjes….
I’ve yet to attend one of these — and not sure if or when I ever will, as it doesn’t seem the thing that our handful of Dutch friends do. But at least if I ever do go to one, I’m going to feel much more prepared after reading all the tips and tricks and warnings from other expats who have gone before me! You’re doing a public service!
I wish I wasn’t drinking coffee while I read this! You successfully got it to come out of my nose ;-) Great post!