Dutch customs and etiquette

The Dutch have a code of etiquette which governs social behaviour and is considered important.

[1] The author Colleen Geske stated in her book Stuff Dutch People Like that "Dutch people consider the English or American forms of politeness a sign of weakness, and reeking of insincerity and hypocrisy.

This phenomenon is humorously discussed in White and Boucke’s The UnDutchables: If you take a course in the Dutch language and finally progress enough to dare to utter some sentences in public, the persons you speak to will inevitably answer you in what they detect to be your native tongue.

The main subjects of Dutch jokes at the time were deranged households, drunken clerics (mostly of the Roman Catholic Church) and people with mental and/or physical handicaps.

This continued into the 1960s: during World War II, American soldiers were instructed not to tell jokes to the Dutch as "they would not appreciate it".