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It's on December 5th.

As a Dutch person who grew up with this tradition, the tradition doesn't have all the same racist connotations that historical blackface does. "Zwarte Piet" isn't put in a bad light but as an approachable friend who brings children gifts. I personally never experienced him as a negative stereotype in any way. There's been plenty of attempts to tie his origins to slavery or denigrating racist stereotypes, but historians just don't really find conclusive evidence for that. The reason seems to be more like "just cause" rather than some racist reasoning. He just sort of "popped up", people liked the character so he stuck around.

Nonetheless, some people are uncomfortable with it. And I don't think changing the colour of his skin should matter all that much. The story told to kids was that he's only black due to all the chimney soot (which he climbs through to deliver presents), but a couple years the national broadcaster had a story (there's a sort of "Sinterklaas News" programme for kids with a new exciting story each year for why this time maybe you won't get presents but at the last moment everything works out anyway) where the boat that Sinterklaas and the Pieten take from Spain to the Netherlands sailed through a rainbow, so now all the Pieten have all kinds of different rainbow colours instead of black. They ditched some of the other stereotypical stuff (like the bright red lips and earrings) quietly because kids don't notice nor care about that.

I don't agree that celebrating with Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) makes someone a racist. It's an old tradition people were born into, it's just normal to them and people certainly don't typically celebrate with Zwarte Piet in order to be negative towards people of colour in any way. Hell, the Netherlands is fairly well known for being tolerant.

I do however agree that if someone asks to change it because it's uncomfortable, that getting angry about it and deliberately not changing it because of "muh traditions" certainly does seem quite racist. Piet being black is just a detail, it's not part of the core of the tradition. Like, are these people in the pocket of "big black makeup" or something? Just make them all kinds of colours, looks a lot more cheerful too imo. Thankfully the country is moving away from him being black so hopefully in the future the debate can be laid to rest.

You got that in common with most native Germans until maybe a few years ago.

Now now, The French Foreign Legion isn't slavery. It will just make you wish for nuclear winter.

Dutch Wikipedia has the first references to blackness from soot pinned to an image from the 1870s:

"Zwarte Piet had in deze tijd nog niet zijn huidige naam; zo is hij op een centsprent uit 1870 afgebeeld als een schoorsteenveger met de naam Zwartjan." https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_Piet#%3A%7E%3Atext=Zwarte+Piet+had+in+deze+tijd+nog+niet+zijn+huidige+naam%3B+zo+is+hij+op+een+centsprent+uit+1870+afgebeeld+als+een+schoorsteenveger+met+de+naam+Zwartjan.

Translates to: "Black Pete did not have his current name yet, he was depicted on an image from the 1870s as a chimney sweeper named "Black Jan" (Jan is a stereotypically Dutch name, one of the most common Dutch first names. Pete, or Piet in Dutch, is also a very common Dutch name).

the original original Sinterklaas was a guy that rescued prostitudes