英国与美国的圣诞节发展（每日外刊1227-美国的圣诞节战争）

背景知识

当地时间12月8日，位于纽约的福克斯新闻正在直播，人们突然发现新闻总部大楼外一棵巨型圣诞树燃起了大火。现场视频显示，圣诞树燃起熊熊火光，福克斯新闻主播香农·布里姆 (Shannon Bream)立即直播了大楼外的这场事故。据报道，该新闻大楼里除了福克斯新闻，还有华尔街日报和纽约邮报等。警方表示，纵火嫌疑人是49岁男子克雷格·塔玛纳哈 (Craig Tamanaha)，据称他无家可归，在街上游荡，爬上了圣诞树，用一个打火机就把圣诞树点燃了。塔玛纳哈被指控恶作剧、纵火等罪名，但都是轻罪。律师称，嫌疑人很可能只被关几个小时就可以获释，然后又回到街上游荡。这棵圣诞树高约15米，上面装饰了约1万个玻璃饰品和超10万个灯饰，组装就耗去了21个小时。圣诞树的残骸已经被拆除，福克斯新闻CEO苏珊娜·斯科特表示，将重新安装一棵新的圣诞树，并举行点灯仪式。

英国与美国的圣诞节发展（每日外刊1227-美国的圣诞节战争）(1)

正文阅读

America’s Christmas wars

美国的圣诞节战争

Having spent almost two decades ballyhooing a non-existent “War on Christmas”, Fox News received the best present imaginable in the first week of Advent. A homeless man called Craig Tamanaha, while stumbling around Manhattan late one night, came across the 50-foot-high “All American Christmas Tree” in Fox Square. Mr Tamanaha climbed it, allegedly flicked his lighter, and the tree-like installation went up with a whoosh.

在花了近20年的时间大肆宣扬一个根本不存在的“圣诞节战争”之后，福克斯新闻在降临节的第一周收到了你能想象到的最好的礼物。一天深夜，一位名叫克雷格·塔玛纳哈的流浪汉在曼哈顿附近踉踉跄跄地走着，在福克斯广场偶然发现了一棵50英尺高的“全美圣诞树”。据称，塔玛纳哈爬了上去，点燃打火机，这个像树一样的装饰嗖的一声起火。

It seems the suspected arsonist was not in his perfect mind. Mr Tamanaha had earlier exposed himself to journalists outside the courthouse where Ghislaine Maxwell is on trial. Yet for Fox, his vandalism represented the war its anchors had spent so long trying to talk into existence. “Torching Christmas trees is an attack on Christianity!” wailed Tucker Carlson. For two days, the catastrophe and Fox’s Churchillian resolve to rebuild the tree sculpture dominated its coverage. “We will not let this deliberate and brazen act of cowardice deter us,” thundered Fox’s CEO, Suzanne Scott.

看来这名纵火犯的头脑并不灵光。早些时候，塔玛纳哈曾在吉斯莱恩·马克斯韦尔受审的法院外向记者暴露了自己。然而，对福克斯来说，他的破坏行为代表了新闻节目主持人花了这么长时间试图促成的战争。“焚烧圣诞树是对基督教的攻击！”塔克·卡尔森哀号道。两天来，这场灾难和福克斯重建这座树形雕塑的丘吉尔式决心占据了新闻报道的主导地位。福克斯首席执行官苏珊娜·斯科特怒气冲冲地说：“我们不会让这种蓄意和厚颜无耻的懦弱行为吓退我们。”

Fox’s imagined War on Christmas is nonsense and conservative pay-dirt. Though Christian practice is collapsing (the share of Americans who attend church regularly has fallen by almost half since Bill O’Reilly first detected the war in 2005), Christmas is invulnerable. Nine in ten Americans celebrate it, including a growing multitude of non-Christians. The problem, for Fox’s anxious white audience, is precisely that diversity, however. The war is a figment designed to exacerbate its fears of a changing country.

福克斯想象中的“圣诞节之战”纯属无稽之谈，也是保守派的赚钱手段。尽管基督教活动正在瓦解（自从2005年比尔·奥莱利首次察觉这场“战争”以来，经常去教堂做礼拜的美国人的比例几乎下降了一半），但圣诞节是坚不可摧的。十分之九的美国人都在庆祝这一节日，包括越来越多的非基督徒。然而，对于福克斯焦虑的白人观众来说，问题恰恰在于这种多样性。这场战争是虚构的，旨在加剧人们对一个不断变化的国家的恐惧。

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