In Molendam, Father Christmas and Jack Frost are happy friends. The canals are frozen over, traditional ships are stuck in the ice. When the sky is dark at five o'clock, clog maker Willem Geurts lights the great bonfires on the quay, making short work of the day’s wood chips. The light of the bonfire dances on the ice, just like Froukje van Tilborgh of the grocery shop. Her sons join in on their little wooden skates as Mayor Van der Kolk makes deft figures of eight on his Friesian flat-skates.

Baker Aad Brakenhoff’s twins Henkie and Lieke hold their balance with a chair, learning how to skate. His wife Bertha’s domain is the ‘cake and drinks’ stand, selling hot Christmas waffles and gin. This is also the place where the Molendam residents meet. They keep warm with thick gloves and stories of the old days, about Molendam, the polder, the water. The stories that give the Molendam residents their own place in the history of the town, following the tracks left in the creaking snow by the generations before them.