2010年，圣誕老人（Santa Claus）慶祝了他的一千七百三十歲生日！其原型尼古拉斯（Nicholas）在公元前280年出生于利西亞小國，這個國家現已并入土耳其。

2015圣誕節專題：圣誕老人來了！

The origins of our Christmas traditions are the most fascinating of any holiday. All our favorite activities can be traced back to specific points in history, and knowing how these things came about just makes celebrating Christmas that much more wonderful.
圣誕節傳統的起源是所有節日中最吸引人的。我們喜歡的任何活動都可以追溯到歷史上特定的由來處，并且知道這些活動是如何產生的，這也是為了慶祝更美妙的圣誕節。

In 2010, Santa Claus is celebrating his 1,730th birthday! The original Nicholas was born in 280 A.D. in the small country of Lycia, which is now part of modern-day Turkey.
2010年，圣誕老人慶祝了他的一千七百三十歲生日！其原型尼古拉斯在公元前280年出生于利西亞小國，這個國家現已并入土耳其。

Nicholas became first a priest and then a bishop in the early Christian church. The very first paintings of him show Nicholas wearing the ceremonial robes of a Christian bishop – red trimmed with white. When we see “Santa’s suit” today, we’re seeing those same colors.
在早期的基督教會中尼古拉斯由一名牧師晉升為主教。尼古拉斯的第一幅畫像是他穿著基督教主教的儀式長袍——紅色鑲有白色的衣服。在如今的圣誕老人裝扮中，我們也能看到與其相同的顏色。

Nicholas became famous for gift-giving, usually to the poor. In the early fourth century a legend began to spread about Nicholas coming at night to the home of three poor girls who did not have dowries and therefore could not marry their fiancés. While the girls slept, Nicholas left gold coins in their stockings, which were drying by the fire. That’s how our tradition of Santa filling stockings got its start.
尼古拉斯因經常給窮人送禮而廣受贊譽。早在四世紀，相傳尼古拉斯在晚上來到三個窮苦的女孩房前，由于沒有嫁妝，她們無法和自己的未婚夫結婚。當女孩們在睡覺時，尼古拉斯把金幣放進正在烘烤的襪子里。這正是圣誕老人把禮物放進襪子傳統的由來。

Santa is known my many names all over the world. He became “Santa Claus” in America because many of the first English colonists to arrive to not celebrate Christmas; as Puritans they felt the holiday was disrespectful to Jesus. But their children saw the children of Dutch settlers receiving gifts from someone called “St. Nicholas.” They thought the gift-giver’s name was “Sinter Klass” and anglicized it further to “Santa Claus.”
圣誕老人在世界各地有很多不同的名字。在美國，他是“圣克勞斯”（Santa Claus），因為第一批到來的英國殖民者大多不慶祝圣誕節；身為清教徒，他們覺得過節是對耶穌的不敬。但是他們的孩子看到荷蘭殖民者的孩子收到來自一個名叫“圣尼古拉斯”（St. Nicholas）的禮物。他們認為送禮人的名字是“圣特克勞斯”（Sinter Klass），再將名字英譯就是“圣克勞斯”。

Many people think Santa’s reindeer were introduced to the holiday in Clement Moore’s wonderful poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” which most of us now call “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” Moore wrote about Santa and the eight reindeer in 1822. But in 1809 another great American author named Washington Irving wrote a book titled Diedrich Knickerbocker, and in it he wrote about St. Nicholas delivering presents to children “by flying over the treetops in a wagon.” Clement Moore simply expanded on that previous description.
很多人認為在克萊門特?穆爾（Clement Moore）的名詩《圣古拉斯的來訪》（A Visit from St. Nicholas）中，將圣誕老人的馴鹿和節日聯系了起來，這首詩現在也被稱為《圣誕節前夜》（Twas the Night Before Christmas）。穆爾在1822年寫了關于圣誕老人和八只馴鹿的故事。然而在1809年，另一名偉大的美國作家華盛頓?歐文（Washington Irving）寫了一本書《迪德里奇．尼克巴克》（Diedrich Knickerbocker），他在書中寫道圣尼古拉斯坐著馬車飛躍在樹梢上給孩子送禮物。克萊門特?穆爾只是對以前故事的描述加以擴展。

The first department store Santa appeared in 1841 at J.W. Parkinson’s Dry Goods store in Philadelphia. This Santa tried to slide down a chimney to impress the children who were watching, but he got stuck halfway down.
1841年，圣誕老人出現在第一百貨商店—— 費城的帕金森干貨商場（J.W. Parkinson’s Dry Goods store in Philadelphia）。圣誕老人試圖滑下煙囪，來給正在觀看的小孩留下深刻印象，但是他卻卡在了那里。

During the Civil War, a magazine artist named Thomas Nast began drawing cartoons of Santa as a diversion for readers from the horrors of war. He sketched Santa as living at the North Pole, and having a lot of elves as his assistants. Everyone believed that must be true.
內戰期間，藝術家托馬斯?納斯特（Thomas Nast）開始創作圣誕老人的漫畫，這成為了戰爭恐怖下人們的娛樂。他勾畫出了這樣一幅畫面——生活在北極的圣誕老人，身邊圍繞著一群調皮的小精靈助手。此后，每個人都相信有這樣一位人物。

Mrs. Claus began appearing in Christmas lore in the late 1880s. In 1889 a poet/composer named Katharine Lee Bates wrote a poem called “Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.” (Wives in those days were often referred to as “good wives,” or “goody” for short.) In the poem, Mrs. Claus tells Santa that she will deliver gifts that year, since it’s not fair that he gets to have all the fun. In 1910 another poem of Ms. Bates was set to music and published as a song everyone knows – America the Beautiful.
克勞斯夫人于19世紀80年代末的圣誕傳說中第一次亮相。1889年，一位詩人、作曲家凱瑟琳?李貝茨（Katharine Lee Bates）寫了一首詩《糖果圣克勞斯的雪橇之旅》（Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride）。（在那個時代，妻子經常是 “好妻子”或“糖果”的簡稱。）在這首詩里，勞克斯夫人告訴圣誕老人，她希望在那一年由她來派送禮物，因為在此之前只有圣誕老人一人享受了其中所有的樂趣，這是不公平的。1910年，貝茨的另一首詩改編成了音樂，發表之后成為人人皆知的一首歌——“美麗的美利堅”（America the Beautiful）。

In 1890 department store Santas began appearing all over America, especially on the East Coast around Boston. They were so popular that parents in other cities joined together and hired passenger trains to take their families to see these Santas.
1890年，圣誕老人百貨商場盛行于美國，尤其是在波士頓的東海岸。它們是如此的受歡迎，世界各地的家長一起帶著家人，坐著租來的旅客列車觀賞這些圣誕老人。

About this same time, Ralph E. Morris of the New England Telephone Company looked at switchboard lights and proposed that strings of them be hung on Christmas trees- they would be safer than candles.
大約在同一時間，新英格蘭電話公司（New England Telephone Company）的拉爾夫?莫里斯（Ralph E. Morris）看著圣誕樹上掛著的一串串交換彩燈，而這些比蠟燭更安全。

Our modern-day image of Santa as a stout man is based on Coca-Cola ads from the 1930s. Artist Hans Sundblom used as his model a retired salesman named Les Prentice.
我們現在對于圣誕老人這個身材豐滿的形象是基于上個世紀三十年代的可口可樂廣告。藝術家漢斯?松德布盧姆（Hans Sundblom）用一個退休的銷售員諾士?普倫蒂斯（Les Prentice）作為他的模特。

英文來源：beliefnet
譯者：祝小英
審校&編輯：丹妮