Sint

Sint (released on DVD as Saint in Europe and Saint Nick in the United States) is a 2010 Dutch dark comedy horror film about Sinterklaas, a character comparable to Santa Claus in English-speaking countries. The film was directed by Dick Maas and marked his return to the horror genre, in which he gained acclaim with his debut De Lift (1983) and Amsterdamned (1988). The story distorts the popular traditions of Sinterklaas and portrays him as a ghost who murders large numbers of people when his annual celebration night coincides with a full moon.

Plot

On 5 December 1492, a gang led by former bishop Niklas is killed by villagers who refuse to put up with the gang's looting and killing any longer. In years in which the gang's death date coincides with a full moon, they return as murderous ghosts.

The public is unaware of this and annually celebrates the Sinterklaas tradition on 5 December, with adults not believing that Sinterklaas exists but making little children believe that he is benevolent. The Zwarte Pieten are not blackened by soot from chimneys but as a result of the fire in which they were killed. Niklas' crosier has sharp edges and is a weapon. On 5 December Sinterklaas and the Zwarte Pieten do not stand out, as many people are dressed like them for the celebration.

Paul Sintenis

Paul Ernst Emil Sintenis (4 April 1847 Seidenberg, Oberlausitz, Prussia – 6 March 1907) was a German botanist, pharmacist and plant collector. He studied at the gymnasium in Görlitz, became a pharmacist’s apprentice in 1863 and worked as such in several German cities.

His first collecting trip, in the years 1872–1876, was as helper to his brother Max, with whom he collected birds, mammals and plants in the Dobruja.

After further pharmaceutical studies in Breslau (now Wrocław) and another short stint as pharmacist, he spent the rest of his professional life as a plant collector.

Between the years 1880 and 1883 he collected on Rhodes, Cyprus, Northern Italy, and Istria.

Sintenis arrived in Puerto Rico in October 1884 and, supported by Leopold Krug, remained there until June 1887.

He subsequently collected in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Greece. Sintenis's herbarium was acquired by Lund University (Sweden), where it is still kept. The first set of his Puerto Rican collections was mostly destroyed at Dahlem (Berlin) during the Second World War, but duplicates survived in all major herbaria, primarily Kew, the British Museum, Harvard, New York Botanical Garden, and the National Museum of Natural History in Washington.

Shinto

Shinto (神道, Shintō), also called kami-no-michi, is the ethnic religion of the people of Japan. It focuses on ritual practices to be carried out diligently, to establish a connection between present-day Japan and its ancient past. Shinto practices were first recorded and codified in the written historical records of the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki in the 8th century. Still, these earliest Japanese writings do not refer to a unified "Shinto religion", but rather to a collection of native beliefs and mythology. Shinto today is a term that applies to the religion of public shrines devoted to the worship of a multitude of gods (kami), suited to various purposes such as war memorials and harvest festivals, and applies as well to various sectarian organizations. Practitioners express their diverse beliefs through a standard language and practice, adopting a similar style in dress and ritual, dating from around the time of the Nara and Heian periods.

The word Shinto ("way of the gods") was adopted, originally as Jindō or Shindō, from the written Chinese Shendao (神道, pinyin: shén dào), combining two kanji: "shin" (神), meaning "spirit" or kami; and "tō" (道), meaning a philosophical path or study (from the Chinese word dào). The oldest recorded usage of the word Shindo is from the second half of the 6th century.Kami are defined in English as "spirits", "essences" or "gods", referring to the energy generating the phenomena. Since Japanese language does not distinguish between singular and plural, kami refers to the divinity, or sacred essence, that manifests in multiple forms: rocks, trees, rivers, animals, places, and even people can be said to possess the nature of kami. Kami and people are not separate; they exist within the same world and share its interrelated complexity.