The chocoladeletter is one of the most recognisable objects of the Dutch Sinterklaas calendar: a solid chocolate letter, usually the initial of the recipient's first name, given within families, at school and at work in the days around 5 December. In Dutch the word is used in the plural, chocoladeletters, for the whole seasonal display; a single letter is een chocoladeletter.
Supermarkets set out the letters in alphabetical bins from the autumn onward. Common initials such as M, S and A are bought in large numbers, and rare letters such as Q, X and Y used to be hard to find; today most manufacturers offer the full alphabet, though some leave out the rarest letters.
From bread letters to chocolate
Edible letters are older than chocolate ones. Letters made of bread dough, cake and pastry (banketletters, filled with almond paste, are still baked today) appear in Dutch still lifes and household customs well before the industrial era. One explanation often given is that a dough letter was placed on a child's pile of presents to mark whose they were; another links edible letters to learning the alphabet. Neither origin is firmly documented, and both may have played a part.
Chocolate letters belong to the late nineteenth century, when chocolate became cheaper and factory moulding made it possible to produce letters in quantity. By the early twentieth century the chocolate letter had become a standard Sinterklaas gift, alongside rather than instead of the pastry letter.
How the letters are made
Letters are cast from tempered chocolate in letter-shaped moulds, cooled, demoulded and packed in a printed sleeve, often with a window. The typical style is a heavy slab-serif (Egyptienne) letter with grooves on the face; the grooves help release the letter from the mould and hide small cooling marks. Because a narrow letter would otherwise weigh less than a wide one, manufacturers make narrow letters thicker or wider so that every letter in a range has the same weight — an "I" may even be packed as two pieces.
Milk chocolate is the default, with dark and white versions widely available; bakeries and chocolatiers sell decorated, filled or marzipan-topped letters, and sugar-free versions exist. Several Dutch chocolate brands and supermarket private labels produce letters, among them the long-established Droste and newer brands such as Tony's Chocolonely.
The convention of the initial
The usual rule is one letter per person, the initial of the first name: Marieke gets an M, Johannes a J. Families bend the rule freely — a shared family letter, a letter for a pet, a substitute when the right initial has sold out — and the negotiation is part of the fun.
"Chocoladelettereep"?
Searchers sometimes ask what a chocoladelettereep is. It is not a fixed product name: reep is Dutch for a chocolate bar, so the compound simply describes a chocolate letter or a letter-shaped bar. On its own, chocoladeletter is also Dutch slang for very large, bold newspaper headline type — "in chocoladeletters" means "in huge letters".
Abroad
The chocolate letter has travelled with Dutch emigrants, and Dutch shops in Canada, the United States, Australia and elsewhere import letters for the season. Supply is seasonal: letters appear in the autumn and largely disappear after 5 December. Practical advice on finding them is in the buying guide.