我们应该相信圣诞老人吗?

Should We Believe in Santa Claus?

我们应该相信圣诞老人吗?

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，为了捍卫宗教信仰，曾在南北战争时期担任战地记者的纽约《太阳报》(The Sun)编辑弗朗西斯·法塞勒斯·彻奇(Francis Pharcellus Church)给该报写了篇社论。这篇文章对时年8岁的弗吉尼亚·O·汉隆(Virginia O. Hanlon)提出的一个问题作了回应，其中的一句话已经成了广为流传的名言：“是的，弗吉尼亚，世界上真的有圣诞老人。”

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.”

彻奇在论证过程中双管齐下。他首先表示，我们无法知道是否真的有圣诞老人。即便已经查看过世界上的每一个烟囱，我们也无法确定圣诞老人没有以某种人类尚未发现的、不能用现有理论来解释的方式溜走。别忘了，我们现在知道中微子会穿过彻奇和弗吉尼亚的身体，但在他们生活的年代，即便掌握了最前沿的物理学理论，也远远无法弄清什么是中微子。也许圣诞老人就是一个与此类似的存在。而且，就像人类的胃——不同于白蚁的胃——无法消化木头一样，我们的大脑也无法知晓某些事情。或许圣诞老人就是其中之一。但彻奇为什么不坚持圣诞老人的不可知论，而是主张大胆相信圣诞老人存在论呢?他从实用主义的角度抛出了自己的第二个观点。我们应该相信圣诞老人存在，因为如果这样做，我们就能活得更好。他指出，为了让生活更好过一些，我们需要诗歌、浪漫以及孩子气的信仰，这与尼采 (Nietzsche)为艺术辩白的方式如出一辙。没有圣诞老人的生活沉闷而又平淡，有了圣诞老人，生活则会变得有趣而又神奇。因此我们不妨相信他存在。按照彻奇的说法，我们还应该相信真的有在草坪上跳舞的精灵，真的有一个看不见的世界，那里满是“超凡的美丽和荣光”。

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.

担任战地记者期间，彻奇目睹了以看不见摸不着的信仰为名的大屠杀。他需要相信精灵的存在，但他对童年进行了令人直起鸡皮疙瘩的顶礼膜拜，他的文字中有一种高调的毫不收敛的甜腻，这种维多利亚时代的腔调可能让我们望而却步。因此，我们有必要以一种更加现代、更加平实的方式，来重新阐述他的观点：相信圣诞老人存在论是有好处的。

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.

圣诞老人之所以成其为圣诞老人，是因为他会带来圣诞礼物;相信圣诞老人存在论的切实好处，是与送礼物这一惯例联系在一起的。正如欧·亨利(O. Henry )在小说《麦琪的礼物》(The Gift of the Magi)中所指出的，赠送礼物这件事是经不起理性推敲的。还记得吧，在那篇小说里(如果没看过，小心剧透)，丈夫变卖了自己最宝贵的财产——一块手表 ——给妻子买了一把梳子，让她用来梳理秀发，结果却得知，妻子把一头秀发卖给了假发商，用换来的钱给他买了表链。从功利的角度看，这场礼物交换简直失败透顶。如果我们相信有圣诞老人，那么就等于相信，礼物赠送的一个特点就是拒绝理性分析。此外，如果我们相信有圣诞老人，这个神秘的人物会在午夜从天而降，那我们就相当于刻意地朝着难得糊涂的状态迈出了一步——我们防止了生活的某种情感基础被掀个底儿掉。彻奇认为，这是有好处的。