我們應(yīng)該相信圣誕老人嗎?

Should We Believe in Santa Claus?

我們應(yīng)該相信圣誕老人嗎?

In 1897 the American Civil War correspondent and editor Francis Pharcellus Church wrote an editorial for the New York newspaper The Sun in defense of religious belief. The piece responded to a question by 8-year-old Virginia O. Hanlon and included what has become the famous catch phrase, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”

1897年，為了捍衛(wèi)宗教信仰，曾在南北戰(zhàn)爭時期擔(dān)任戰(zhàn)地記者的紐約《太陽報》(The Sun)編輯弗朗西斯·法塞勒斯·徹奇(Francis Pharcellus Church)給該報寫了篇社論。這篇文章對時年8歲的弗吉尼亞·O·漢隆(Virginia O. Hanlon)提出的一個問題作了回應(yīng)，其中的一句話已經(jīng)成了廣為流傳的名言：“是的，弗吉尼亞，世界上真的有圣誕老人。”

Church’s argument is double-barreled. First he argues we have no way of knowing if Santa is really there. Even if we observed every chimney in the world, we wouldn’t know that Santa couldn’t slip through in some as yet undetected and untheorized manner. After all, we know today that both Church and Virginia had neutrinos passing through their bodies although neutrinos were far beyond the most advanced physics of their day. Maybe Santa’s like that. Further, just as the human stomach — unlike the termite’s — can’t digest wood, so there are some things our brains just aren’t capable of knowing. Maybe Santa is one of them.But why does Church argue for making the leap to Santa belief, rather than standing pat with Santa agnosticism? Here Church brings in his second, pragmatic point. We should believe in Santa Claus because it will make our lives better if we do. Echoing Nietzsche’s defense of art, Church argues that we need poetry, romance and childlike faith to make life tolerable. Life without Santa is dreary and unromantic, and life with Santa is fun and magical. So we might as well believe in him. We also, according to Church, should believe in fairies dancing on the lawn, and an unseen world full of “supernal beauty and glory.”

徹奇在論證過程中雙管齊下。他首先表示，我們無法知道是否真的有圣誕老人。即便已經(jīng)查看過世界上的每一個煙囪，我們也無法確定圣誕老人沒有以某種人類尚未發(fā)現(xiàn)的、不能用現(xiàn)有理論來解釋的方式溜走。別忘了，我們現(xiàn)在知道中微子會穿過徹奇和弗吉尼亞的身體，但在他們生活的年代，即便掌握了最前沿的物理學(xué)理論，也遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)無法弄清什么是中微子。也許圣誕老人就是一個與此類似的存在。而且，就像人類的胃——不同于白蟻的胃——無法消化木頭一樣，我們的大腦也無法知曉某些事情?；蛟S圣誕老人就是其中之一。但徹奇為什么不堅持圣誕老人的不可知論，而是主張大膽相信圣誕老人存在論呢?他從實用主義的角度拋出了自己的第二個觀點。我們應(yīng)該相信圣誕老人存在，因為如果這樣做，我們就能活得更好。他指出，為了讓生活更好過一些，我們需要詩歌、浪漫以及孩子氣的信仰，這與尼采 (Nietzsche)為藝術(shù)辯白的方式如出一轍。沒有圣誕老人的生活沉悶而又平淡，有了圣誕老人，生活則會變得有趣而又神奇。因此我們不妨相信他存在。按照徹奇的說法，我們還應(yīng)該相信真的有在草坪上跳舞的精靈，真的有一個看不見的世界，那里滿是“超凡的美麗和榮光”。

As a war reporter, Church saw mass slaughter carried out in the name of unseen ideals. He needed to believe in fairies, but we may balk at his Victorian tone with its creepy veneration of childhood and high-toned glurge. So it’s worth restating his point about the benefits of a belief in Santa in more modern, prosaic terms.

擔(dān)任戰(zhàn)地記者期間，徹奇目睹了以看不見摸不著的信仰為名的大屠殺。他需要相信精靈的存在，但他對童年進行了令人直起雞皮疙瘩的頂禮膜拜，他的文字中有一種高調(diào)的毫不收斂的甜膩，這種維多利亞時代的腔調(diào)可能讓我們望而卻步。因此，我們有必要以一種更加現(xiàn)代、更加平實的方式，來重新闡述他的觀點：相信圣誕老人存在論是有好處的。

The sine qua non of Santa is that he brings Christmas gifts, and the real benefits of Santa belief relate to the practice of gift-giving. Gift-giving, as O. Henry points out in his story “The Gift of the Magi,” seems to wither under rational scrutiny. In the story, you will recall (and if not, spoiler alert), the husband sells his favorite possession, a watch, to get his wife a comb for her beautiful hair, only to learn that she has sold her hair to a wigmaker in order to earn the money to buy him a fob for his watch. From a utilitarian point of view this gift exchange was a fiasco. If we believe in Santa, we believe in an aspect of gift-giving that resists rational analysis. Further, if we believe in Santa, a mysterious figure who comes in the middle of the night, we make a deliberate move toward obscurity — we prevent certain emotional underpinnings of our lives from being demystified. And that, Church argues, is good.

圣誕老人之所以成其為圣誕老人，是因為他會帶來圣誕禮物;相信圣誕老人存在論的切實好處，是與送禮物這一慣例聯(lián)系在一起的。正如歐·亨利(O. Henry )在小說《麥琪的禮物》(The Gift of the Magi)中所指出的，贈送禮物這件事是經(jīng)不起理性推敲的。還記得吧，在那篇小說里(如果沒看過，小心劇透)，丈夫變賣了自己最寶貴的財產(chǎn)——一塊手表 ——給妻子買了一把梳子，讓她用來梳理秀發(fā)，結(jié)果卻得知，妻子把一頭秀發(fā)賣給了假發(fā)商，用換來的錢給他買了表鏈。從功利的角度看，這場禮物交換簡直失敗透頂。如果我們相信有圣誕老人，那么就等于相信，禮物贈送的一個特點就是拒絕理性分析。此外，如果我們相信有圣誕老人，這個神秘的人物會在午夜從天而降，那我們就相當(dāng)于刻意地朝著難得糊涂的狀態(tài)邁出了一步——我們防止了生活的某種情感基礎(chǔ)被掀個底兒掉。徹奇認(rèn)為，這是有好處的。