"Allen Steele - Zwarte Piet's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Steele Allen)

retroactively began on January 1, 1961, which became Gemini 1, m.y. 1 by local reckoning. The
conversion factors from Gregorian to Zubrin calendars are fairly complex, so don't ask for an explanation
here, except to say that one of the first things newcomers from Earth have to realize is that April Fool
pranks are even less funny at Arsia Station than they were back in Indiana.

Indeed, aresians pretty much did away with Halloween, Thanksgiving, Guy Fawkes Day, Bastille Day,
and virtually every other Earth holiday. Our New Year's is out of whack with the rest of the solar system,
and instead of Columbus Day we have First Landing; when Mars seceded from the Pax Astra in 2066,
or m.y. 57, we began commemorating the event with our own Independence Day. A few religious
holidays continue to be observed at the same time as they are on Earth. West Bank, the small Jewish
settlement on the western slope of the Tharsis bulge, celebrates hanukkah in accordance with the
traditional Hebrew calendar; I was once there for the third night of hanukkah, and watched as the family
with whom I was staying lit its menorah when the colony's DNAI calculated the sun had set in Jerusalem.

Christmas has been imported as well, yet because the aresian year was nearly twice as long as Earth's, it
comes around half as often. The first colonists tried having their Christmas promptly on December 25th,
but it felt odd to be celebrating Christmas twice a year, sometimes in the middle of the Martian summer.
When the colonies formally adopted the Zubrin calendar in m.y. 38, it was decided that the aresian
Christmas would fall only once every two Earth years; this meant that we had to devise our own way of
observing the holiday. So instead of designating one single sol in Taurus as being Christmas Day, aresians
picked the second week of the month as Christmas Week, beginning on Ta. 6 and continuing through
Ta.13; it was roughly adapted from the Dutch tradition of observing December 6 as the Feast of St.
Nicholas. During that week, everyone would take a break from all but the most essential labor, and this
would give families and clans a chance to get together and exchange gifts. Devout Christians who wished
to continue unofficially observing December 25 as Jesus's birthday were welcome to do so—New
Chattanooga and Wellstown took two sols off each aresian year for a terran-style Christmas—but it
wasn't marked on the Zubrin calendar.

Most of the original Seven Colonies, with the exception of West Bank, accepted Christmas Week as a
respite from the hard work of settling the Martian frontier. As more immigrants from Earth and the Moon
began establishing new colonies along the eastern equator, they adopted Christmas Week as well. Yet,
as time went on, the aresian Christmas began to lose much of its original meaning.

Indeed, as some noted, the week never had that much meaning to begin with. Since it wasn't held to
celebrate of the birth of Christ, it had little religious significance. Families and clans tended to live in the
same colonies, often sharing the same quarters, so there wasn't much point in setting aside an entire week
for them to get together. These colonists lived on the verge of poverty; Pax trade tariffs and the enormous
cost of importing items from Earth made Christmas presents beyond the reach of most people, and giving
someone a new helmet liner is hardly the stuff of romance. So what usually happened during Christmas
Week was that people congregated in taprooms to get ripped on homebrew and hempweed; when the
taprooms closed, louts roamed the corridors looking for trouble. By mid-century, Christmas Week had
degenerated into debauchery, random violence, and the occasional fatal accident. It wasn't a lot of fun.

Worse yet was the fact that the first generation of aresians to be born on Mars was growing up with only
second-hand knowledge of what Christmas was supposed to be like. They'd read old microfiche stories
about Rudolph and Santa Claus, the Grinch and Scrooge, or watch disks of ancient films like It's A
Wonderful Life and Frosty the Snowman, and then go to their parents asking why Santa didn't drop
down their chimney to leave wrapped and ribboned gifts beneath a tree strung with lights and tiny
ornaments. Perhaps you can successfully explain to a four-year-old why there aren't any reindeer and
Douglas firs on Mars, or even point out that your two-room apartment doesn't have a hearth, let alone a