Dutch Identity Today — What Survived the Generations
Near Holland, Michigan
The Dutch culture that Albertus van Raalte brought to western Michigan in eighteen forty seven was never meant to be preserved as a museum exhibit. It was meant to be lived. A century and three quarters later, the question of what survived and what became performance is worth thinking about.
The churches survived most completely. Holland, Michigan has dozens of Reformed and Christian Reformed congregations, some with histories stretching back to the first decade of the kolonie. The Christian Reformed Church in North America, one of the major Dutch Reformed denominations in the country, has deep roots in western Michigan. For many families, the faith Van Raalte carried across the Atlantic remains the organizing fact of community life.
The Dutch language faded gradually. Second and third generation families moved to English in their schools and businesses. Some Dutch survived in church settings and family homes into the mid-twentieth century, but it is essentially gone now as a community language.
What remains most visibly is the festival culture, the brick downtown architecture, and a set of food traditions including Dutch letters, a pastry made of almond paste folded into butter dough, and stroopwafels, the thin caramel waffle cookies sold in Dutch bakeries and shops around town. The roots are real. Some of the flowers are for tourists. In Holland, it is genuinely difficult to tell which is which.
