Zalig is like merry: an old-fashioned adjective that people don’t really use anymore, except for in combination with a particular noun. (Although I’ve heard local youngsters use the word zalig as a substitute for cool, so maybe it has come back into fashion).

Other, perhaps more commonly used substitutes, inlcude vrolijk, which literally means happy (the ancestor of the English “frolic”), and prettig, pleasant. Prettige feestdagen is often said, pleasant holidays.

Kerstfeest, of course, is one of those famous Dutch compounds of kerst, a derivative of Christus, Christ, and feest, party, or feast.

There’s de kerstboom, the Christmas tree, het kerstdiner, Christmas dinner, and in most churches across the country there will be kerstnachtdiensten, Christmas evening services.

City centres have been invaded by the smell of sausages and mulled wine coming from the stalls of de kerstmarkt, the Christmas market – a celebration of kitsch, as the Germans say, and gezelligheid (that rather untranslatable word we learned earlier this year – roughly cosiness).

Many squares also boast a kerststal of some sorts, a depiction of the birth of Jesus (stal means stable). The one on the Grote Markt in Brussels is particularly big and attracts almost as many “oohs” and “aahs” as the Manneken Pis – who, by the way, is currently dressed as the kerstman, or Christmas man, better known in the anglophone world as Father Christmas or Santa Claus.

In Flanders, as in most of the rest of Europe, he looks essentially like his American counterpart, who in turn seems to have taken his looks from the Dutch and Flemish Sinterklaas, an older tradition that is celebrated earlier in December (see Talking Dutch, two issues back).

Nieuwjaar is for most people an occasion for vuurwerk, fireworks, champagne and fancy dresses. For children in Flanders, however, it’s all about de nieuwjaarsbrief, the New Year’s letter. This is a letter addressed to parents, grandparents or godparents (de meter, godmother, and de peter, godfather), in which the kids tell them what they wish for in the new year. It is custom on 1 January that they read the letter out loud, after which they receive, of course, gifts.