You have just returned from the wedding of your nephew Philip Grech to Victoria at Zandvort (Along-The-Sand) near Haarlem, in the Netherlands. Was it very different from what we are used to here in Malta?

The proceedings were opened by the registrar, a lady somewhat younger than myself, attired in damask black robes similar to those I wore when I was rector of the University. She began her homily declaring that though she had celebrated at hundreds of weddings, this was the first time she was doing it by the seashore.

She went on to add that probably it was also the first time that I was to minister at the religious part of the ceremony with the widely surging ocean waves as background sound and with a vast expanse of sand at our feet.

Actually, I thought it was a very apt symbolic setting, with the ocean evoking the infinite as at Campostella, and the sand, the desert that had to be crossed often in life. The registrar in the Netherlands always delivers a homily (as I am calling it because of the style employed) based on the answers given her when she conducts a lengthy interview with the couple, questioning them about their intentions in marrying each other.

In this case, she actually got Philip and Vicky to write out their motivations, which she read out. She interspersed her declaration with a running commentary of her own, for instance, confessing that she did not understand what the references to Aristophanes and to Heidegger in Philip's poetic dissertation meant.

She made approving noises at the down-to-earthness of Vicky's. (Some readers may have recognised her name as that of the probation officer to whom almost invariably cases of taxi tigers and similar offenders were assigned).

Some Dutch people present told me that their traditional weddings usually began at the mayor's office. Then if there was to be a religious ceremony, they would go to church, and then to a third place. There, first a formal reception would be held with guests in hats and so on, for about an hour.

After that, only a small party of close friends would stay on and it would develop rather like a variety show, with almost everyone making would-be funny speeches or performing satirical sketches about the couple. The discourse did not usually become wittier as the players became tipsier.

In our case, the unfolding of events fell a bit short of the Netherlandish standard. However, a group of fellow students in the Philosophy of Technology postgraduate course that Philip is following at the University of Twente formed a band who played dance-songs, the lyrics of several of which were composed by Philip, and there were sundry performances by other guests going down to very young ages.

Since on the eve of the wedding, the Netherlands beat Japan in the World Cup, the bachelor colleagues, who came from 27 different ethnicities but were all wearing orange top-hats or wigs, dressed Philip up in a kimono with slant-eyed make-up and paraded him round the city as their captive and slave through the night.

Did the Netherlands live up to its reputation as being the ideal role-model country for multiculturalism?

Once a Maltese former colleague of mine at the University of Malta who married a Dutchman and had learnt to speak Dutch perfectly took me to a shop in Amsterdam. The salesgirl looked Chinese to me. I supposed that she spoke Dutch to us, but it did not sound at all like it in my ear.

However, my friend told me it would not have been politically correct to ask her if she could possibly speak Dutch a little bit more clearly. If one were to do that, surely the gentle Chinese look would catch fire as if with European aggressiveness. She would try to put on an ultra-Dutch accent but sound all the more Chinese.

That had indeed happened to my friend once. On that occasion, the manager had noticed the altercation that was developing bet-ween his employee and a client. So, he intervened, explained in clear Dutch what the salesgirl had been trying to say and then told my Maltese friend that the Dutch government spent a lot of money on Dutch language courses for allochtonons. He was implying that my friend should follow one, even though it was obvious she could, in fact, speak Dutch extremely well.

I am retelling this story to illustrate the complexity of the situation in the Netherlands as compared, for instance, with the Maltese. In Holland, one in every five residents is an allochtonon, a Dutch legal term signifying that at least one parent was born abroad. The allochtonons are so numerous and so varied because the bulk of them went there for one of two main reasons.

The first was post-colonial immigration, when many from Indonesia, Surinam, the Antilles or other parts of the empire established by the Dutch in the 17th century, who had developed empathy with their colonial masters, decided to leave their native country after independence.

The second was the adoption by the Netherlands of a scheme similar to that of the German guest-workers. Most of those who came to Holland in search of employment were originally from Turkey or Morocco. It is remarkable that a few of the second generation of these immigrants have become, in recent years, among the foremost novelists writing in the Dutch language, but producing a characteristic genre of literature that has been branded by critics as "culturally hybrid".

How is it that the rightwing quasi-racist parties grew in strength at the last election?

I would put it down to the unemployment caused by the global recession. Some guests at the wedding told me that the government is now even exalting as admirable mothers who stay at home to bring up their children rather than seek jobs.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.