经济学人阅读｜圣诞专栏 Season’s greetings!

经济学人The Economist是一份英国的英文新闻周报，分八个版本于每周五向全球发行，编辑部位于伦敦，创办于1843年9月。

经济学人是一本综合性新闻评论刊物，有商业、国家和地区、经济和金融、科学和技术五大类。其中文章文风紧凑且严谨，对语言精准运用，展现出一种克制的风趣幽默，常运用双关语调侃。

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今天羚羊君（公众：aa-acad）给大家分享的是经济学人2020年12月19日期刊中圣诞专栏的第一篇：Season’s greetings!

这篇文章讲述了从二十世纪中叶到现在圣诞简报的发展历史和变迁。

想要阅读往期内容，可以在公众号右下角点击"更多资讯-长文阅读"进入专栏。

01

Season’s greetings!

圣诞季的问候！

On christmas day in 1948, Marie Harris published the mid-century equivalent of a status update. In June that year, “lying on the beach watching the waves of the Pacific roll in”, she and her husband Bob had decided they needed more space for their young family. Through an ad in the local paper they found just the place: a rambling old farmhouse with green shutters in rural Shedd, Oregon. They swapped their crowded city digs for a retreat worthy of Instagram: five acres of land, thick with boysenberries, apple, pear and walnut trees. But apart from the 17 chickens, three geese, two cats, a cow, a duck and a collie called Mac, Shedd was not a sociable sort of place. So Marie’s three-page bulletin ended with something akin to a friend request: “We have lots of animals,” typed the 28-year-old, “but would like company of a more human sort—and mail.”

1948年圣诞节那天，玛丽·哈里斯（Marie Harris）发布了一篇公告，这个公告类似于她的"世纪中的新动态"。一切源于同年6月，“躺在海滩上，看着太平洋滚滚的浪潮”，她和丈夫鲍勃决定为他们的新家庭提供更大的生活空间。通过当地报纸上的一则广告，他们发现了这个地方：俄勒冈州谢德农村的一间杂乱无章的老农舍，这间农舍带有绿色的百叶窗。他们用拥挤的城市蜗居换来了值得在Instagram上疯狂po图的居所：五英亩的土地，上面有草莓，苹果，梨和核桃树。但是，除了17只鸡，三只鹅，两只猫，一头牛，一只鸭子和一只叫Mac的牧羊犬之外，谢德并不是一个社交场所。因此，玛丽（Marie）的三页公告结尾是一个类似于交友的请求：“我们有很多动物，”，这位28岁的女孩在公告中打着“但希望有人的陪伴或者朋友的来信。”

02

So concluded the first edition of the Harris Herald, a newsletter which Marie would publish every Christmas for the rest of her life. Usually typed on a side or two of letter paper and sometimes embellished with stick-man drawings, maps and photos, the Herald provided friends and family with news of high-school wrestling triumphs, tonsillectomies, hunting hauls and river voyages on a home-made cruiser, Noah’s Place (later renamed PITA, short for Pain In The Ass, after it overheated and broke down halfway up the Columbia river). Over 54 editions Marie chronicled the surprise birth of twins, the premature death of Bob, her return to college, remarriage (at which point the Harris Herald became the Bussard-Harris Christmas Annual), promotion to college professor and the arrivals of 18 grandchildren, as well as more great-grandchildren than most readers could keep track of.

因此，第一版《哈里斯先驱报》（Harris Herald）就这么写完了。这份"报纸"更多的是一封简讯，玛丽将在余生中的每个圣诞节期间出版。《先驱报》通常在信纸的一两面打字，有时还点缀着火柴人的图画、地图和照片，向亲朋好友提供了有关高中摔跤胜利、扁桃体切除术、狩猎和河道航行的新闻。河道航行由一艘家庭制造的巡洋舰完成的，这艘巡洋舰的名字叫做"诺亚之地"（Noah's Place）（后更名为PITA，是Pain In The Ass的缩写。取这个名字是在它在哥伦比亚河航行时，因为过热而抛锚之后）。玛丽用超过54版记录了双胞胎的意外出生、鲍勃的过早去世、她重返大学、再婚（此时哈里斯先驱报成为《巴萨德·哈里斯圣诞节年鉴》）、晋升为大学教授以及她的18个孙子的到来和更多的重孙到来，这是大多数读者无法追踪的。

03

The Herald is the oldest archived example of a Christmas newsletter, a medium that, long before the internet, allowed the sharing (and over-sharing) of carefully curated news and photos to a wide network of friends and family. Most Christmas letters linger for a few weeks above the fireplace before being thrown away in the New Year clear-out. But historians are increasingly interested in the few that are kept. Like modern social media, the bulletins offer a window into everyday domestic life—or at least the version of it that the authors presented to the world.

《先驱报》是圣诞节简讯的最古老的存档示例，该媒介早在互联网出现之前就做到了将精心挑选的新闻和照片广泛分享（和共享）给朋友和家人。大多数圣诞信件仅仅只在家中的火炉旁被放置了几周，就要在新年大扫除中被扔掉。但是，历史学家对保留的少数文献越来越感兴趣。与现代社交媒体一样，这些公告为人们提供了通向家庭生活的一扇窗户，或者至少是作者向全世界展示的家庭生活的版本。

04

Marie Harris was among the pioneers of a medium that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic after the second world war. People had exchanged Christmas cards with loved ones since Victorian times, when a wellchosen card was considered a present in itself. As incomes rose in the second half of the 20th century, people sent more cards; by the 1970s it was common to buy them by the box. The more cards people posted, the more of a pain it became to hand-write long messages.

玛丽·哈里斯（Marie Harris）是第二次世界大战后在大西洋两岸兴起的一种媒介的开拓者之一。自维多利亚时代以来，人们就已经与亲人交换圣诞贺卡，当时精心挑选的贺卡本身就被视为礼物。随着20世纪下半叶收入的增长，人们寄出了更多的贺卡。到二十世纪七十年代时，人们通常是通过盒子购买它们。人们张贴的卡越多，手写长信息就会变得越痛苦。

05

So when technology allowed an insert to be copied, people did so. Marie’s first Heralds were printed by mimeograph, a contraption that used a rotating drum to force blueish ink through a stencil made of waxed paper. Few people had access to such a thing (Marie used one at Oregon State College, where Bob worked as a lecturer). From the 1960s, photocopiers began popping up in offices. The smart new look of the BussardHarris Christmas Annual in1961was courtesy of the Xerox machine in the office of David Bussard, Marie’s second husband. In the1980s home computers and printers made it easier still to make newsletters; Marie’s 1988 bulletin describes a “rash” of such missives.

因此，当技术使得人们能复制插入的内容时，人们就这样做了。玛丽的第一本《先驱先驱》是用油印机印刷的。这种油印机使用旋转的滚筒将蓝色墨水压过蜡纸制成的模版。很少有人接触到这种东西（玛丽在鲍勃担任讲师的俄勒冈州立大学使用过这种东西）。从二十世纪六十年代起，复印机开始出现在办公室中。1961年，BussardHarris圣诞节周年纪念册出现了新的时尚的外观，这得益于Marie的第二任丈夫David Bussard的施乐牌复印机。在20世纪80年代，家用计算机和打印机使制作新闻简报变得更加容易。玛丽（Marie）在1988年的公告中描述了这类文件（即简报）的大量涌现。

06

As these letters became more common, people found ways to make them stand out. Photos began to appear (we first see the Harris-Bussards in1975: Marie, in flares, reclining in an armchair as David perches by the fireplace). The 1990s brought an outbreak of Christmassy clip-art, with cheerful Santas sometimes incongruously placed next to reports of deceased pets. Around the same time, stationers began to sell Christmas-themed paper aimed at newsletter scribes.

随着这些简报变得越来越普遍，人们找到了使它们脱颖而出的方法。照片开始出现（我们在1975年首次见到了哈里斯布萨德夫妇的照片：玛丽在火光中斜坐在一个扶手椅上，而她的丈夫大卫正在壁炉旁）。1990年代流行起了圣诞节风格的剪贴画，欢快的圣诞老人画像有时会被很不协调地拍版在宠物故去的报道旁。大约在同一时间，文具商开始销售针对新闻通讯员的圣诞节主题画。

07

Some authors expressed themselves in verse. A collection of newsletters held by Ann Burnett of North Dakota State University includes one written in 14 just-about-rhyming stanzas:

We travelled to Normandy，

Where the Allies did land，

And then on to London，

Where we stayed at the Strand

一些作者用诗歌表达自己。北达科他州立大学的安·伯内特（Ann Burnett）的通讯集中包括押韵的14行诗：

我们去了诺曼底

盟军降落的地方

然后去伦敦

我们住在斯特兰德家

其他人则从孩子那里获取灵感。当这种形式的圣诞简讯不再新颖时，有些人以他们的宠物之名写了一些虚构的东西。伯内特女士收藏中的一封信读起来通常很正常：一个儿子在耶鲁大学读书，一个孙子即将降世，诸如此类。只是名义上的作者是这一家人早已死去的猫和狗。公告栏上常常会出现一张四处搜索的戴着眼镜的双眼的照片。

经济学人一般目录大纲：

• The world this week：简单梳理本周的时事
• Leaders：社论，对本周热点事件进行评论
• Briefing：简报，对一个特定热点话题深度讨论
• Letter：读者来信，对往期文章的评论
• Sections：各大洲及中美英三国的本周热点事件报道
• Business：商业新闻
• Finances and economics：财经新闻
• Science and technology：科技新闻
• Books and arts：文化书籍，书评和文化现象讨论
• Economic and financial indicators：商业及财经指数
• Buttonwood：金融专栏
• Schumpeter：商业专栏
• Bartleby：职场专栏
• Bagehot：英国专栏
• Charlemagne：欧洲专栏
• Lexington：美国专栏
• Banyan：亚洲专栏