21世纪大学英语读写基础教程第9课内容详解
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21
世纪大学英语读写基础教程第
9
课内容详解
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21
世纪大学英语读写基础教程第
9
课内容详解
导语：在美国圣诞节，圣诞节一直以一堆礼物和豪华派对为特
色。不久前 ，一群人呼吁市民放弃奢侈的圣诞庆祝活动，度过假
期。下面是一篇题为保卫简单的圣诞节的英语课文， 欢迎大家阅
读。
Text
In the ., Christmas has long been characterized by
piles of presents and lavish parties. Not long ago, a
group of people urged the public to give up extravagant
Christmas celebrations and spend the holiday simply.
In Defense of a Simple Christmas
Bill McKibben
I know what I will be doing on Christmas Eve. My wife,
my 4-year-old daughter, my dad, my brother and I will
snowshoe out into the woods in the late afternoon, choose
a suitable tree and saw it down. I have had my eye on
three or four likely candidates all year.
We will bring it home, shake off the snow, decorate it
and then head for church, where the Sunday school class I
help teach will perform this year
#39;s pageant. And then it is home to hang stockings,
stoke the fire and go to bed. Our Christmas celebration is
as traditional as it gets, except that there is no
sprawling pile of presents under the tree.
Several years ago, a few of us in northern New York
started a campaign for
quot;$$100 holidays.
quot; We decided to urge people not to spend more than
$$100 per family on presents and to rely instead on simple
homemade gifts. That first year, I made walking sticks for
everyone. Last year, I made spicy chicken sausage. My
mother has embraced the idea by making calendars
illustrated with snapshots she has taken.
The $$100 figure was a way to explain to children why
they weren
#39;t getting everything on their list. So far, our
daughter, Sophie, does fine at Christmas. Her stocking is
exciting to her. The tree is exciting. Skating on the pond
is exciting. It is worth mentioning, however, that we don
#39;t have a television, so she may not understand the
degree of her impoverishment.
This holiday idea may sound modest. It is modest. And
yet at the same time, it is pretty radical. Christmas, it
turns out, is a bulwark of the nation
#39;s economy. Many businesses do a third of their volume
in the months just before Dec. 25. And so it hits a nerve
to question whether we should celebrate the birth of a man
who said we should give all that we have to the poor by
showering one another with motorized tie racks.
When we began the $$100 campaign, merchants writing to
the local newspapers made it clear to us what a
threatening idea it was. Newspaper columnists thought it
was pretty extreme, too. One said that while our message
had merit, it would do too much damage to business.
And he was right, or at least not wrong. If we all
backed out of Christmas excess, we would sink many a gift
shop. If we threw less lavish office parties, caterers
would suffer
—
and florists and liquor wholesalers and so
on down the feeding chain. But we have to start somewhere
if we are to climb down from the unsustainable heights we
have reached, and Christmas might as well be it.
When we began to spread our idea about celebrating
Christmas in a new way, we were earnest and sober. Big-
time Christmas was an environmental disgrace
—
all that
wrapping paper and all those batteries. The money could be
so much better spent: The price of one silk necktie could
feed a village for a day. And struggling to create a
proper Christmas drives poor families into debt. Here in
New York, January finds many people cutting back on heat
to pay off their Christmas bills.
Those were all good reasons to scale back. But as we
continued our campaign, we found we really weren
#39;t interested in changing Christmas because we wanted
fewer batteries. We wanted more joy. We felt cheated by
the Christmases we were having
—
so rushed, so busy and
so full of hype that we couldn
#39;t relax and enjoy the season.
You may be too late for this Christmas. You already
may have bought your pile of stuff. In fact, turning the
focus of Christmas back to Christ is a long and patient
effort. But to judge from our family
#39;s holidays in recent years, it is well worth the
effort.
New Words
defense
n. the act or process of defending
维护，保卫
;
辩护
snowshoe
vi.
穿雪鞋行走
n. (
用于在雪地上行走的
)
雪
鞋
saw
v.
锯，锯开
candidate
n.
候选者
;
候选人
decorate
v. add sth. to (an object or place), esp. in order to
make it more attractive
装饰
pageant
n. a show or ceremony, usu. out of doors, in which
there are people wearing rich dress or in which historical
scenes are acted
盛大的庆曲
;(
露天演出的
)
历史剧
stocking
n.
长袜，袜子
stoke
v. stir up and feed fuel to (a fire, etc.)
添加燃料拨
旺
(
炉火
)
celebration
n. the act of celebrating
庆祝
sprawl
vi. spread out irregularly over a large area (
杂乱无章
地
)
蔓生，蔓延，扩展
campaign
n. a planned set of actions intended to realize a
particular goal
运动
urge
vt. try very hard to advise or ask (sb.) to do a
particular thing
力劝
;
敦促
per
prep. for each
每，每一
rely
vi. (on) depend on sb. or sth.
依靠
homemade
a. made at home, locally or at the place bought
自制的
spicy
a. having or producing a pleasantly strong taste and
smell
有香
(
料
)
味的
;
辛辣的
sausage
n.
香肠
;
腊肠
embrace
vt. (fml) accept eagerly [
正式
]
欣然接受
vt.
amp; vi. take and hold (sb. or each other) in the arms (
互
相
)
拥抱
calendar
n.
日历
illustrate
vt. 1. add pictures to (a book, etc.)
给
(
书等
)
加插图
2. make clear by examples (
用例子
)
说明
;
表明
snapshot
n. an informal photo, usu. taken with a simple camera
(
简易照相机拍的
)
快照
figure
n. 1. an amount, esp. of money (
钱等的
)
数目
2. any of the number signs
数字符号
pond
n. an area of water smaller than a lake
池塘
mention
vt. speak about (sth.) in a few words
提及，谈起
impoverishment
n. poverty
贫穷
modest
a. 1. not large in amount, size, value, etc.
适度的，
不过分的
2. having a lower opinion of one
#39;s own ability than is probably deserved
谦虚的
radical
a. extreme; thoroughgoing
激进的
;
彻底的
bulwark
n. any protection against danger, injury, etc.
保障
;
支
柱