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Christmas is all about this guy.
圣诞节的一切都与这个人有关。
No, not the Jewish revolutionary zealot from Nazareth who sought to overthrow the rich elite of Jerusalem and Rome.
不，不是那些试图推翻耶路撒冷和罗马的富有精英的，来自拿撒勒的犹太革命狂热分子。
Today’s capitalist Christmas centers around this guy.
今天的资本主义圣诞节是以这个人为中心。
A white, old, bearded man stealing down your chimney to give you gifts and eat your cookies.
一个从你的烟囱里偷偷溜下来，给你送礼物，吃你饼干的留着胡子的白人老头。
Santa Claus has been around for a long time.
圣诞老人已经存在很长时间了。
Since the early 1800s, Washington Irving and Clement Moore began to shape St Nicholas into a thick-bellied Dutch sailor with a pipe.
从19世纪初开始，华盛顿·欧文和克莱门特·穆尔就开始把圣·尼古拉斯塑造成一个有着大肚腩、拿着烟斗的荷兰水手。
But it wasn’t until a century later that the Santa Claus we know today– and the copious amounts of presents he brings– became a fully-fledged image.
但直到一个世纪后，我们今天所认识的圣诞老人--以及他带来的大量礼物--才成为一个成熟的形象。
The image of the jolly, rosy cheeked man all decked out in red was finalized by the artist Haddon Sundblom and wielded as a tool by a famous corporation.
这个身穿红色衣服、脸颊红润的快乐男人形象是由艺术家哈登·桑德布洛姆最终确定的，并被一家著名公司用作了工具。
Starting in the 1930s, Coca-Cola employed Sundblom and used his rich depictions of a merry white-haired Santa Claus to sell their product.
从20世纪30年代开始，可口可乐聘请了桑德布洛姆，利用他对快乐的白发圣诞老人的丰富描绘来销售他们的产品。
The advertising campaign worked so well that from 1931 to 1964, Coca-Cola had Sunblom paint Santa Claus into their brand every Christmas season.
广告宣传效果非常好，从1931年到1964年，可口可乐让桑德布洛姆在每个圣诞季都把圣诞老人画在他们的品牌上。
Each advertisement saw jolly old Santa Claus sipping a coke or raiding a home’s fridge for a stash of their product.
在每一则广告中，人们都可以看到快乐的圣诞老人喝可乐，或者在家里的冰箱里翻找他们的产品。
While Coca-Cola by no means invented Santa Claus, they wielded his imagery to sell their product, and in the process helped shape Santa and ultimately the purpose of the holiday itself: it became a holiday of buying stuff.
虽然肯定不是可口可乐发明了圣诞老人，但他们利用了圣诞老人的形象来销售他们的产品，在这个过程中，他们帮助塑造了圣诞老人，并最终形成了这个节日本身的目的：它成为了一个购物的节日。
This co-option of Christmas as a holiday of material goods grew in conjunction with Pintard and his associate’s crusade to privatize festivities.
这种将圣诞节同样作为买卖物质产品节日的选择，是随着平塔德和他的同伙将节日私有化的运动而发展起来的。
In the 1820s, the emerging child toy industry realized that Christmas was a lucrative opportunity to sell their products.
在19世纪20年代，新兴的儿童玩具业意识到圣诞节是销售他们产品的一个有利可图的机会。
The tradition of gift-giving to children meshed well with the rapidly growing toy industry, and by the turn of the 20th century, toy makers were filling newspapers and magazines with advertisements hailing children to buy their toys during Christmas time.
给孩子送礼的传统与迅速发展的玩具行业非常契合，到了20世纪初，玩具制造商在报纸和杂志上刊登了广告，号召孩子们在圣诞节期间购买他们的玩具。
And soon other industries latched on to the Christmas season.
很快，其他行业也抓住了圣诞节这个机会。
It became a time to offload their production onto the masses for profit.
它成为了将他们的产品转卖给大众并从中牟利的一段时间。
Retailers from Sears Roebuck, to Macys to JCPenny decked out their magazines and stores with Christmas trappings, aligning themselves with the holiday and in the process using it as a way to boost their revenue.
从西尔斯罗巴克到梅西再到杰西潘尼，零售商的杂志和商店都装饰上了圣诞装饰品，与圣诞节保持一致，并在这个过程中将其作为一种增加收入的方式。
This commercialization of Christmas has led to the crushing reality of shame and guilt felt during the Christmas season.
圣诞节的这种商业化造成了一种残酷的现实问题：人们会在圣诞季期间感到羞愧和内疚。
As George Monbiot writes in The Guardian, the endless Christmas marketing and mythos around gift-giving “induces the desire to buy more (if you can) and shame (if you can’t).”
正如乔治·蒙比奥特在《卫报》上所写的那样，无休止的圣诞促销和关于送礼的主题“会让你产生购买更多礼物的欲望(如果你买得到)，也会让你感到羞愧(如果你买不到)。”
Christmas’s transformation from public revelry towards private gift-giving, and then the subsequent commercialization of those gifts has meant that our love is measured by the quality and quantity of presents we give.
圣诞节从公众狂欢到私人送礼的转变，以及随后这些礼物的商业化，意味着我们的爱是用我们所送礼物的质量和数量来衡量的。
And the toll of this capitalist takeover of Christmas is immense, both on us and the environment.
资本主义接管圣诞节的代价是巨大的，对我们和环境都是如此。
17 deaths and 125 injuries.
17人死亡，125人受伤。
That’s the toll Black Friday shopping in the US has taken since 2006.
这就是2006年以来美国黑色星期五购物所付出的代价。
Desperate for the cheapest goods because we’re exploited in the workplace and receive meager wages for our labor, we flock to stores and trample over each other in search of that new TV.
由于我们在工作场所受到剥削，劳动工资微薄，我们迫切需要最便宜的商品，于是我们涌向商店，互相踩踏，只为找那台新电视。
Advertisements and once-a-year deals drive us to consume at record amounts.
广告和一年一次的促销活动驱使我们的消费达到创纪录的水平。
The average American spent $1447 over the holidays in 2021 and is expected to spend a similar amount this year.
2021年，美国人在节日期间的平均消费为1447美元，预计今年的支出也差不多。
And all of that spending is buying hundreds of thousands of miles of wrapping paper, sending billions of pounds of returned presents to the landfill, and in the process we emit 650kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per person in just three days of Christmas festivities.
所有这些支出都用于购买长达数十万英里的包装纸，将数十亿磅退回的礼物送到垃圾填埋场，在这个过程中，我们每人在短短三天的圣诞节庆祝活动中就排放了相当于650公斤的二氧化碳。
If you celebrate Christmas you’ve witnessed the waste it creates.
如果你庆祝圣诞节，你就已经目睹了它造成的浪费。
Whether it’s the wrapping paper tossed to the side, or that book your grandma gave you that’s collecting dust in the back of your closet, or those pants that you never returned and then threw out.
无论是扔在一边的包装纸，还是你奶奶给你的那本在你衣柜后面吃灰的书，或者是你再也没有退货并扔掉的那条裤子。
This waste has material consequences.
这种浪费具有实质性的后果。
Trees are cut down, coal is burned, and workers toil in dehumanizing conditions to bring that wrapping paper and the presents within them to our homes, only for us to throw both away after the dopamine rush wears off.
树木遭到砍伐，煤炭被烧掉，工人们在不人道的条件下辛勤工作，只为把包装纸和里面的礼物送到我们家门口，结果在多巴胺的刺激消失后，我们把它们都扔掉了。
All the while corporations profit and accumulate more wealth.
一直以来，企业都在获利，积累着更多的财富。
It’s tempting to pin the waste, pollution, and excess of Christmas on rampant consumerism.
人们很容易将圣诞节的浪费、污染和过度现象归咎于猖獗的消费主义。
Supposedly people just don’t know when to stop buying, and don’t value the stuff they own.
据说，人们只是不知道什么时候该停止购买，也不珍视自己拥有的东西而已。
But it’s more than that.
但其实不止是这样。
As we saw earlier, companies have a vested interest in us buying as much of their product as possible.
正如我们前面看到的，公司希望我们尽可能多地购买他们的产品以从中受益。
If they’re not constantly producing more goods, and selling them at cheaper prices, other companies will just outcompete them.
如果他们不去持续不断地生产更多产品，并以更低的价格出售，其他公司就会在竞争中超过他们。
So, retailers smother us in Christmas-themed advertising starting as early as mid October, create strategic sale days, and do everything in their power to convince us to buy their products.
因此，零售商早在10月中旬就开始用圣诞主题的广告淹没我们，制定战略促销日，尽一切努力说服我们购买他们的产品。
For those of us don’t want to partake–who seek to stop the material waste of Christmas– our lack of buying changes very little.
我们之中有些人不想参与进来，他们想要阻止圣诞节的物质浪费，对于这些人来说，我们不买东西改变不大。
The damage is already done.
损害已经造成了。
Production has already happened and retailer goods are already stockpiled high in warehouses.
生产已经开始，零售商品已经在仓库里囤积了很多。
This year, for example, companies like Nike and Dell have already created the goods they plan to sell during the holiday season, some $732 million of it.
例如，今年，耐克和戴尔等公司已经推出了他们计划在假日季销售的商品，总价值约为7.32亿美元。
Their stockpiles aren’t a response to high consumer demand, in fact, they’re just the opposite.
他们的库存并不是对高消费需求的回应，事实恰恰相反。
Consumer spending is down this year because of factors like high inflation rates and an unstable economy.
由于高通货膨胀率和经济不稳定等因素，今年的消费者支出有所下降。
And yet, companies produced warehouses, and warehouses full of products.
然而，公司还是建造了仓库，仓库里也还是装满了产品。
In short, regardless of whether customers are buying, companies are still producing.
简而言之，无论客户是否在消费，公司都仍在生产。
And in the process, they create junk, waste, pollution, and exploit their workers to produce even more.
在这个过程中，他们会产生垃圾、废物、污染，并剥削工人生产更多东西。
Christmas is not a holiday of consumerism, it’s a holiday of capitalist production.
圣诞节不是消费主义的节日，而是资本主义生产的节日。
One where parts of the retail industry make a third of their yearly sales in three months.
在这个节日期间，部分零售业在三个月内就达到了年销售额的三分之一。
So, to lessen the toll of Christmas, we must do more than just buy less or wrap presents in cloth.
因此，为了减少圣诞节带来的损失，我们必须做更多的事情，而不仅仅是少买东西或用布包装礼物。
We must envision a holiday that embraces an anti-capitalist and ethical politics.
我们必须设想一个信奉反资本主义和道德政治的节日。
We need a war on capitalist Christmas.
我们需要向资本主义圣诞节开战。
