The police are investigating a possible threat against Heilige Sava, a Serbian Orthodox Church in Nijmegen. Church services for Sunday and Monday were canceled as a precaution while the police investigate, NU.nl reports.
Dobbelmannweg, where the church is located, was closed by the police for several hours on Sunday.
Heilige Sava had Christmas celebrations scheduled for Sunday evening and Monday morning. The church's website states that these services were canceled for security reasons.
The Spirit of Christmas was alive and well in Groningen this week, where a hotelier stepped forward to provide shelter to a young homeless man in the city, and another company offered him a job. A photograph posted to Twitter on Christmas Eve garnered attention as it showed a young man curled up in a brick corner of the Groningen train station.
A number of families in Ede, along with volunteer organization Malkander, offered 24 lonely people a spot at their Christmas dinner table on Tuesday. The goal was to make sure that people who are usually alone on Christmas could still have a fun day, NOS reports.
This initiative was started by Daan Overeem and his wife Marilu Kessele last year. "There are all sorts of initiatives just before Christmas, but on the days itself it's quiet. We just want people who feel lonely to have a great day, because the Christmas days can be most painful", Overeem said to NOS.
While the coming days will be colder, there will unfortunately be no snow on Christmas this year, according to Buienradar. The Christmas season will have cloudy, but dry weather with maximums around 6 or 7 degrees Celsius, RTL Nieuws reports.
Astronomical winter in the Netherlands started wet and windy on Friday. This afternoon will be drier in the south of the country, and the southern provinces may even get a glimpse of sunshine. The northern parts of the country can expect rain until the evening. Afternoon temperatures will be a very mild 12 degrees.
Most Dutch celebrate Christmas at home with friends and family, but a quarter of are lonely over the holidays, according to a survey among 3,342 people by the Salvation Army, AD reports.
Trade union FNV is not allowed to organize any strikes at PostNL in the coming weeks, the court in The Hague ruled in summary proceedings filed by the Dutch postal service, NOS reports.
PostNL argued that strikes during the busy Christmas period would cause "disproportionate damage and risks". Strikes would result in millions of euros of damages and severely affect customers waiting for mail and parcels, according to the company.
Branch organization for supermarkets and food service companies CBL expects that Dutch supermarkets' turnover will exceed 1 billion euros in the Christmas week. The organization calls this a new milestone, the Telegraaf reports.
CBL thinks that supermarkets in the Netherlands will be at their busiest on the Sunday and Monday before Christmas. Most of the fresh produce will be sold on Monday, December 24th.
A large number of supermarkets will also be open on Christmas itself - over 700 on Christmas Day and more than half of all supermarkets on Boxing Day.
PostNL is going to court to try and ban a Christmas strike announced by trade union FNV. The Dutch postal service believes that a strike in the Christmas period - PostNL's busiest period of the year - will cause disproportionate damage to customers and PostNL itself, AD reports.
A 38-year-old man from Voorburg was arrested on Tuesday for throwing his girlfriend out of a first floor window. An hour before this happened, the police also responded to the home after neighbors complained about the noise. Then the Voorburg man told the police they were having a "nice Christmas night", AD reports.
Despite today being a holiday, traffic information service VID warns motorists to expect "heavy traffic jams" this afternoon, RTL Nieuws reports.
The roads will start getting busy from early afternoon, especially on the routes from the east to the Randstad - the A1, A12 and A28, according to VID. The traffic service expects that traffic will peak at around 100 kilometers of traffic jams on Dutch highways.
In his annual Christmas speech, King Willem-Alexander called on the people of the Netherlands not to get caught up in their own little worlds. But instead to work towards forming a stronger community. The full text of his speech, given from the Eikenhorst palace in Wassenaar, can be found below:
Healthily turning fifty and being able to celebrate it with many people together is a fantastic gift. I am grateful that I could experience this this year.
Christmas day in the Netherlands will be predominantly cloudy with some light rain in the morning, according to meteorological institute KNMI. There is no chance of snow.
Afternoon temperatures will climb to a relatively mild 9 degrees Celsius. And a moderate to strong south-westerly wind will blow in the afternoon.
The Kerst Event Zwolle - the biggest living nativity scene in the Netherlands - does not allow Muslims to play a part in their nativity scene. "You can hardly play the role of Joseph if you are not a Christian yourself", co-organizer Cees Scholten said. But that reasoning does not sit well with everyone, De Gelderlander reports.
The city of Amsterdam is implementing a crowd monitoring system to help keep the city safe and accessible for residents and visitors during the busy Christmas season. The system uses smart cameras and WiFi sensors to measure pedestrian traffic on the street. This data is analyzed and used by the police and municipality to make decisions on crowd control, the city announced in a press release.
For the seventh year in a row, the Netherlands will not have snow on Christmas, according to Weeronline. The weather for Monday is expected to be stormy due to a strong southwest wind, but relatively mild, the weather service reports.
Dutch intelligence and security agency AIVD posted its annual brain-buster puzzle online. Puzzle lovers, and anyone else who is bored over the holidays, have until 11:59 p.m. on January 15th to solve the puzzle and submit their answers. This year's puzzle consists of 15 pages with 42 exercises, which participants can solve independently of each other.
Earlier this month State Secretary Klaas Dijkhoff of Security and Justice suggested that mayors keep problem causing asylum seekers under a form of house arrest during the holidays. But forcing asylum seekers to stay inside goes against Dutch law, legal experts from the Center for Public Order and Safety said to broadcaster BNR.
A massive 96 percent of children in the Netherlands celebrate Christmas. Slightly more than half think Christmas is the best holiday in the year, according to a survey done by NOS Jeugdjournaal.
94 percent of the participating kids think Christmas is fun, though 1 percent called it "stupid". The top five best things about Christmas, according to the kids, are being with family and friends, food, Christmas decorations, gifts and no school. The top two least favorite things are going to church and having to wear nice clothes.
Over 700 supermarkets in the Netherlands opened their doors on Christmas Day, a new record, according to openingstijden.nl. On Boxing Day today more than 2,800 stores are open, AD reports.
With some 700 stores open, Christmas Day looked like a regular shopping Sunday, according to the site. Last year only about 400 stores were open on Christmas and in 2014 only 200.
The Netherlands can expect a stormy Boxing Day today, following the third warmest Christmas Day in the country since temperature measurements started in 1901.
According to Weerplaza, Sunday was the third mildest Christmas day in the Netherlands with temperatures reaching 12 degrees towards the end of the Day. Only last year, with 14 degrees, and 1997 with 12.8 degrees were hotter.
A major Christmas celebration of eight schools was canceled in Meppel, Drenthe on Thursday. An attack on the Christmas market in Berlin on Monday played a big role in the decision to cancel the event, school director Herman Langhorst said to De Stentor. The organizers fear that panic would have overrun the visitors.
During Christmas and New Year's insurance companies in the Netherlands receive on average double the number of claims as on ordinary days, according to figures from the Dutch Association of Insurers. However, for the third year in a row there was a decrease in the number of burglary claims last year, AD reports.
Last year there wre some 38 thousand burglaries across the country, compared to 45 thousand in 2014. That is a decrease of about 18 percent. Compared to 2013, the number of burglary claims submitted per day halved from 250 to 125.
On Tuesday a new exhibition is opening in Amsterdam's town hall, the Stopera. The exhibition is titled Winter Wonder Wasteland. It is a Christmas installation made out of waste fished from the Amsterdam canals and the IJ river, ANP reports.
The waste collected from the canals and IJ included bottles, crisp packets, cans, snack containers and much more. All of this trash was cleaned and then turned into Christmas decorations. The exhibition will be in the Stopera for one month.
Indonesian authorities will not seek the death penalty against the heir to the family behind Albert Heijn grocery stores. Djaï Heijn is suspected of dealing, importing, producing and using marijuana a court in the island country heard on Monday, according to RTL Nieuws.
