圣诞树的生与逝

译/许鹏飞 审订/丛卢

“Little full,” says Clark Griswold as the untethered branches of the family Christmas tree smash the windows of his living room.Soon the tree is ignited by a rogue cigar—though not before a cat has been electrocuted by its lights.A squirrel jumps out of the replacement tree, running amok and making a grandmother faint.

“有点儿放不下了。”克拉克·格里斯沃尔德说，家中圣诞树的枝干在解开捆绳时一下子四散，戳破了客厅窗户。很快，一支雪茄莫名点着了这棵树——而树上的灯刚刚电死了一只猫。一只松鼠从换了的圣诞树里蹦出来，横冲直撞，吓晕了一位老祖母。

2There is a lot of wisdom in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, not least about Christmas trees.Bringing the country into the home, they are a topsyturvy symbol of the carnivalesque holiday—when work is suspended, adults act like children, and everyone eats and drinks too much while pretending to get along.At the same time the Christmas tree suggests the reverse: not chaos but order, the taming of the outside world,the safety of domesticity.Think of the providential Christmas-tree bauble in which Macaulay Culkin spies the reflection of the burglars in Home Alone.

2电影《疯狂圣诞假期》中有很多笑点，关于圣诞树的尤其多。圣诞树指引全国民众归家，成了狂欢假日颠三倒四的象征——圣诞期间，工作丢在一旁，大人都像小孩，大家尽情吃喝，装作和乐融融。同时，圣诞树也代表着相反的一面：不是混乱，而是秩序，外界一片祥和，家中安宁舒适。想想《小鬼当家》中麦考利·卡尔金从圣诞树彩球上发现了窃贼的影子，真是天意。

3The Christmas tree is at once rudimentary and magical.Its genius lies in a simple trick of out-of-placeness—a tree in the house!—combined with an inviting blankness.To find meaning in a tree, you must suspend disbelief; and once you do, it can, like many popular rituals, mean whatever you want it to.The spruce donated every year by Oslo to London, and displayed in Trafalgar Square, conveys gratitude for wartime solidarity.America’s first “National Christmas Tree”, illuminated by Calvin Coolidge in Washington in 1923, was a token of progress and advertisement for electric power.This flexibility has helped the Christmas tree conquer even non-Christian parts of the world—making it, in turn, an emblem of globalisation.

3圣诞树既粗陋又神奇。它的妙处在于搞了个简单的错位把戏——房子里放了棵树！——还留下大片空白引人遐思。要想寻找一棵树的意义，就得放下质疑；只要心诚，这棵树就能像许多颇受欢迎的仪式一般被赋予任何期待的含义。挪威首都奥斯陆每年都会向英国首都伦敦捐赠一棵云杉，放在特拉法加广场展出，以致谢战时英国给予的支持。美国的第一棵“国家圣诞树”由卡尔文·柯立芝于1923 年在华盛顿点亮，以象征进步、宣传电力。圣诞树寓意多变，因而得以“征服”世界上许多非基督教国家和地区——而这也让它成为全球化的一个象征。

4Its branches are hung with myths:that in the eighth century St Boniface felled an oak to disrupt a human sacrifice, a Christmas fir rising in its place;or that, awed by the stars, Martin Luther first adorned a Christmas tree with candles.As Judith Flanders explains in Christmas: A History, the concept probably derived from the “paradise tree”that appeared in medieval plays, springing into life of its own in 15th-century Germany, adopted first by guilds, then toffs and finally the masses.German immigrants transplanted the tree to America, albeit probably not the Hessian mercenaries who fought for the crown in the revolutionary war.Legend has it that they were too busy decorating their trees to stop George Washington crossing the Delaware in 1776.

4圣诞树的枝条缀满了神话传说：据传，公元8 世纪时，英国传教士圣卜尼法斯赴德传教，砍倒一棵橡树，阻止了当地异教徒进行人祭，后来橡树所在之处长出一棵冷杉，成为了后来的圣诞树；也有记载说，马丁·路德对繁星充满敬畏，成为用蜡烛装点圣诞树的第一人。而朱迪丝·弗兰德斯在《圣诞节：一部历史》中写道，圣诞树大约源于中世纪戏剧中出现的“天堂树”，盛行于15 世纪的德国，这一概念最先为行会组织采纳，然后是富裕阶级，最后才渐渐为普罗大众接受。德国移民将圣诞树文化移植到了美国，这与独立战争中服务于英国王室的黑森佣兵大约无涉。有传闻说，1776 年，他们是因为忙于装饰圣诞树，才没能阻止乔治·华盛顿渡过特拉华河。

5Private myths encircle individual trees like the rings inside a trunk.Each is a tribute to past, sometimes forgotten times (where did that toucan ornament come from?) and a bridge between now and then.Observing one inThe Christmas Tree, Charles Dickens reflected on “the branches of the Christmas Tree of our own young Christmas days, by which we climbed to real life”.Amid the foliage “Christmas associations cluster thick”, Dickens wrote, including“the softened music in the night, ever unalterable”.

5神秘的传说围绕一棵棵圣诞树展开，就像树干内一圈圈的年轮。每个传说都在致敬过去，有时是被人遗忘的过去（比如巨嘴鸟装饰源自哪里？），同时也是沟通过往和现在的桥梁。就像查尔斯·狄更斯在《圣诞树》一文中所描绘的，“圣诞树的枝条承载了我们对幼时圣诞节的回忆，在回忆的积淀中我们步入了现实生活”。在狄更斯笔下，树叶丛生之处“圣诞记忆联翩浮现”，包括“夜晚流淌的轻柔音乐，恒久不变”。

6Amid all the subjectivity, though,some meanings are inescapable.Like the evergreen boughs used in Druid,Roman and Egyptian rites, the Christmas tree connotes rebirth and fertility.When, in Christmas Tree, Lady Gaga sang “Light me up, put me on top” and“My Christmas tree’s delicious”, she was only making this link explicit.But often the regeneration is less literal.First erected in the early 1930s, the tree at Rockefeller Centre in New York became a sign of hope amid the Depression.Jimmy Stewart and his family stand beside their Christmas tree at the rapturous climax of It’s A Wonderful Life.“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings”, says his daughter as an ornament on the tree tinkles.

6尽管有许多主观解读，但有些含义不可忽视。就像德鲁伊、罗马和埃及的仪式中使用的常青树一样，圣诞树寓意重生和多产。Lady Gaga 在《圣诞树》中唱道“将我点亮，高放顶端”和“我的圣诞树如此美味”，明确了这种联系。但重生并非如此停留在字面意义上。纽约洛克菲勒中心于20世纪30 年代初首次竖立了一棵圣诞树，它成为大萧条时期希望的象征。电影《生活多美好》的高潮处，吉米·史都华和家人站在自家圣诞树旁；随着树上的装饰叮当作响，他的女儿说：“每当铃声响起，就有一个天使得到了翅膀。”

7Yet a tension runs through stories and songs about the Christmas tree—over whether or not it wants to be one.Stevie Wonder’sOne Little Christmas Treeis“standing alone/waiting for someone to come by” and take it home.But other,illusionless bards know what happens after a tree is uprooted.Hans Christian Andersen’sThe Fir-Treewinds up broken and burned.In season three ofFriends,Phoebe bemoans “innocent trees being cut down in their prime and their corpses grotesquely dressed in, like, tinsel and twinkly lights”.

7然而，圣诞树相关的故事和歌曲中贯穿着一个悬念——这棵树自己是否想成为一棵圣诞树。史蒂维·旺德的《一棵小小圣诞树》“独自矗立/等人路过”，带它回家。但其他稍乏幻想的诗人清楚树木连根拔起后会怎么样。汉斯·克里斯蒂安·安徒生的《冷杉树》最终被砍碎烧毁。《老友记》第三季中，菲比则哀叹“无辜的树木在壮年时被砍倒，残肢装饰得怪模怪样，还挂上了金属丝和彩灯串”。

8Even as they symbolise eternal life,Christmas trees are ornaments at their own funerals.The shedding of their needles is a countdown to the end of the holiday, the expiry of the magic that turned a tree into something more,and—especially in a time of climate emergency—the end of other things besides.“Time is always the boss,”crooned Bulat Okudzhava, a Soviet chanteur, in his song about ayolka,the New Year tree that supplanted the Christmas kind in the Soviet Union.“In haste you’re taken down from the cross /And there will be no resurrection.”

8尽管圣诞树象征永生，却成为自己葬礼上的装饰品。针叶一根根掉落，是假期结束的倒计时；魔法耗尽，让一棵树生出了其他含义——尤其在气候剧变之时——其他事物也随之结束。“时间始终掌控一切。”苏联歌手布拉特·奥库贾瓦在一首讲新年树（在苏联相当于西方的圣诞树）的歌曲中低声吟唱，“匆忙中你被从十字架上拉下/从此再无复活。”

9Happy Christmas! ■

9圣诞快乐！ □