The French postal service has been opening a bureau for Father Christmas every winter since 1962. Sixty employees are responsible for responding to letters to Father Christmas. In 2018, more than one million children corresponded with him. But what would happen if someone were to write to Father Christmas, developing a close epistolary relationship with him? This short story explores such a scenario. Pierre M. and Father Christmas have during many years maintained regular and personal correspondence. Yet Father Christmas’s attitude seems to have changed. Pierre M. reveals the evolution of their secret relationship to his mysterious friend. On substance, the short story offers an original perspective on modern marketplace mythologies. Previous studies depict myths as liminal spaces in which people negotiate contradictory meanings, practices and realities. The myth of Father Christmas thus involves compromises between ignorance and knowledge, life and death, the sacred and the profane. The short story tells how they evolve to define the identity of the protagonists and the world they live in. It highlights how they are embodied in hybrid artefacts like letters to Father Christmas and extraordinary servicescape. The short story also questions the performative force of the myth. It shows that it results from the interpretative work and ritual practices of the protagonists involved in an unstable actantial system structured around an enlightened person, an ignorant person and a mythical character. This is constantly negotiated throughout sociotechnical interactions, which, as in the case of witchcraft, may or may not realize the myth. On form, the short story adopts the principle of the eternal return inherent to the myth: it is plotted as a series of small variations on recurring themes and structural repetitions. Intertextual references to academic publications, literary tradition and popular culture enrich the narrative by extending it beyond its textual boundaries.

中文翻译：

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圣诞快乐都是一样的。每个不开心的圣诞节都是以自己的方式不开心

自1962年以来，法国邮政一直在每个冬季开设圣诞节邮局。六十名员工负责回复圣诞节之父的信。在2018年，有超过一百万名儿童与他通信。但是，如果有人写信给圣诞节父亲，并与他建立亲密的书信关系，会发生什么？这个简短的故事探讨了这种情况。皮埃尔·M（Pierre M.）和父亲圣诞节（Father Christmas）多年来保持定期和个人往来。然而，圣诞节父亲的态度似乎已经改变。皮埃尔·M（Pierre M.）向他的神秘朋友透露了他们秘密关系的演变。从本质上讲，这个短篇小说提供了有关现代市场神话的原始观点。先前的研究将神话描述为人们在其中讨论矛盾含义的临界空间，实践和现实。因此，圣诞节父亲的神话涉及无知与知识，生与死，神圣与亵渎之间的折衷。这则短篇小说讲述了他们如何演变以定义主角和他们所生活的世界的身份。它着重强调了它们如何体现在混合文物中，例如致圣诞节父亲的信件和非凡的服务景象。短篇小说还质疑神话的表现力。它表明，这是由于主人公的解释性工作和礼仪实践而产生的，他们围绕着一个开明的人，一个无知的人和一个神话人物构成了一个不稳定的行动体系。这是在整个社会技术互动过程中不断协商得出的结果，就巫术而言，可能会也可能不会实现神话。在表单上 短篇小说采用了神话固有的永恒回报原则：将其绘制为一系列重复出现的主题和结构重复的小变化。对学术出版物，文学传统和大众文化的互文引用使叙事超出了文本的界限，从而丰富了叙事。