硝烟下的圣诞节

滚滚硝烟战场，圣诞节的到来似乎给浴血奋战的士兵们带来了最大的挑战……
 
      Christmas provided the greatest challenge of all. Turkeys were scarce and expensive throughout the war, and for an Oldham schoolgirl the privations of wartime were summed up in her family’s Christmas dinner in 1944: mutton pie followed by wartime Christmas pudding made with grated carrots. The official recipes also suggested grated apples and chopped prunes and dried elderberries to replace the missing dried fruit. The results were rarely very palatable to those old enough to remember the real thing.
　　在所有的挑战中,圣诞节是最大的一个挑战。在战争时期,火鸡罕见又昂贵,而对于一个奥尔德姆市的女学生来说,战时的物资匮乏情况可以用1944年她家的圣诞节晚餐来概括:羊肉派,以及用碾碎的胡萝卜所做的战时圣诞布丁。官方的食谱也建议用苹果碎、碎西梅干和干接骨木果来代替所缺的果脯。但对于那些已经年长到足以记得真实美味的人来说,这些代替品基本上是得不到认同的。

　　One Manchester woman had even more reason than most to remember the great blitz of December 1940, for “my mother’s house in Didsbury had had a direct hit and my mother-in-law’s house in Chilton, and they all descended on me in my little flat. Our Christmas dinner consisted of corned beef hash and wartime Christmas pudding, but we listened to the wireless, sang, played cards and generally had a good time.”
　　有一个曼彻斯特市的女人甚至比大多数人更有理由记得发生在1940年12月的大规模空袭,因为“我母亲在迪兹伯里区的房子被直接击中,同样遭难的还有我婆婆在奇尔顿的房子,于是他们全都突然大驾光临我那间小公寓。我们的圣诞大餐只有咸牛肉土豆泥和战时圣诞布丁,但我们在一起听收音机、唱歌、打牌,基本上玩得还挺开心。”
　　
　　One might, if fortunate, find a Christmas tree, though one mother still remembers with regret that her child “never had the joy of seeing a Christmas tree decorated with electric lights.” But decorations of some kind could be improvised, and one Essex woman’s happiest memory is of “sitting for hours with my small son making flowers and stars from silver paper to put on an otherwise empty Christmas tree.” Painted egg shells and fur cones and fragments of silver paper from processed cheese packets were also used as decorations. Angels and fairy dolls were made from stiff paper and the blue packets in which cotton wool was sold were opened out and cut in to strips for paper chains. Crackers were usually missing, but one East Ham family even succeeded in producing a version of their own from the cardboard centres of toilet rolls wrapped in crepe paper with, inside each, a homemade paper hat and a firecracker left over from Home Guard exercises.
　　如果走运的话,说不定还能找到一棵圣诞树,虽然一位母亲仍然满心遗憾地记得,她的孩子“从没体验过那种看见一棵装饰着电灯的圣诞树的快乐。”但是某些装饰还是能够临时拼凑的。一位埃塞克斯郡的女人最快乐的记忆就是“和我的小儿子一起一坐就是几个小时,用银纸做花和星星,挂在一棵原来空荡荡的圣诞树上。”涂上颜色的蛋壳和毛球,还有从加工乳酪的包装上弄来的银纸碎片也都被用来做装饰。天使和精灵娃娃都是用硬纸做的,而卖棉绒用的蓝色外包装也被拆开并剪成条状做成纸链。一般说来是买不到爆竹的,不过一个东哈姆区的家庭甚至成功自制了一个他们自家版本的爆竹,他们用绉纸包住厕纸卷中间的硬纸圈,然后在每个爆竹中间塞进一顶自制的纸帽子和一个国民自卫军训练时剩下的鞭炮。　　

　　Few Christmas stockings were left unfilled despite the war. A Sheffield girl—two when the war began; eight when it finished—remembers asking in her letter to Santa Claus for “any little thing you can spare.” “This touched my mother, but at the time I couldn’t see why. It just seems logical.”
　　尽管正处于战争时期,但几乎没有哪家的圣诞袜里是空空如也的。一个谢菲尔德市的女孩——当战争开始时她只有两岁,而战争结束时已经八岁了——还记得在她写给圣诞老人的信里请求得到“任何你能够匀出来的小东西。”“这让我母亲非常感动,但在那时候我却不明白为什么。因为会这样做似乎是挺自然的事。”
　　
　　A Surrey girl, six in 1939, remembers being put to bed one Christmas Eve in the shelter in the cellar and leaving detailed instructions on the dining room table to Santa Claus lest he fail to locate this unconventional bedroom.
　　一个萨里郡的女孩,1939年时还只有六岁,依然记得在某个圣诞节的前夜虽然被安顿在地下庇护所中睡觉,却还不忘在饭厅的桌子上给圣诞老人留下了详细的路线指示,唯恐他找不到这个非传统的卧室。
　　A Liverpool woman remembers how another little girl was made happy that year despite the war. “Christmas, 1941: The men were away except my elder brother, which [who] served in the First World War and was in the Home Guard. My daughter had asked Father Christmas for a doll’s house. We looked at each other in dismay. Then my brother found an old bird cage. During the raids, he worked on it, found bits of cardboard for the walls. The office wastepaper basket provided an old file, which made the roof, and he painted the floors. We hunted for all kinds of bits and pieces and the miracle was achieved. A piece of hessian dyed red, fringed, made an elegant carpet. Oh, never will I forget her face that dark Christmas morning and her childish voice piping ’There’ll be bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover’ as she saw those tables and chairs, tiny pictures made out of cigarette cards, her cries of joy as she discovered each new thing.”