【英语趣味课堂】神秘-Myths

OK. Growing up in America, in the United States, as a young child, we have three special people, mythical¹ people, we believe in and we really like because they give us gifts or money. The first special person is the tooth fairy, and the tooth fairy gives you money for your teeth, so it works² like this: when you're very young you lose all your teeth, usually one by one, so every time you lose a tooth you put your tooth under your pillow and when you wake up the next day, magically there is money under your pillow, usually it's a silver dollar, and so you're always very excited to get the money and it's kind of cool because, you know you're happy to lose teeth, maybe the only time you're happy to lose teeth you're entire life. The other special character we believe in is the Easter Bunny and the Easter Bunny hides Easter eggs on Easter Sunday. The Easter Bunny is a rabbit. Bunny means rabbit, and on Easter Sunday, a Christian³ holiday in March and April we go outside with a basket and we look for eggs the Easter bunny hid in the garden or backyard or something like that and there are two types of eggs: there are real eggs, hard-boiled eggs that are painted on the outside and often the children decorate those themselves and there are plastic eggs and plastic eggs are hallow on the inside and you can open them, and when you open them, there is candy or money, so those are the ones the kids really want to get. Actually, it's funny, sometimes kids won't even pick up the real eggs because they just want the eggs with money or candy in them.

 

And then, actually, I'm sorry we have one more person of course, and that is Santa, and everybody knows about Santa around the world, and Santa comes down your chimney⁴ on Christmas Eve Night, Dec 24th, and he puts gifts in your stocking. A stocking is a big sock, a big red sock for Christmas, and you hang it on your fireplace⁵ and then Santa puts toys and gifts inside for the good little children around the world, so the story goes, that Santa works all year to make toys and gifts for children but only for the good children, so you have to be good. If you're a bad child then you don't get any gifts but it usually doesn't work that way, so you come down the next day, and you go to your stocking and you're very happy because Santa had come. One other thing about Santa is usually as children we leave cookies and milk by the fireplace for Santa to eat as like a thank-you gift, and it's interesting because when you go down the next morning, of course the cookies and the milk is always gone and so I think you can guess who actually ate the cookie and drank the milk, but yeah, it's kind of nice, so those are our three special people that we believe in as children in the United States.

 

1 mythical   

adj.神话的；虚构的；想像的

参考例句：

• Undeniably,he is a man of mythical status.不可否认，他是一个神话般的人物。
• Their wealth is merely mythical.他们的财富完全是虚构的。

2 works   

n.作品，著作；工厂，活动部件，机件

参考例句：

• We expect writers to produce more and better works.我们期望作家们写出更多更好的作品。
• The novel is regarded as one of the classic works.这篇小说被公认为是最优秀的作品之一。

3 Christian   

adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒

参考例句：

• They always addressed each other by their Christian name.他们总是以教名互相称呼。
• His mother is a sincere Christian.他母亲是个虔诚的基督教徒。

4 chimney   

n.烟囱，烟筒；玻璃罩

参考例句：

• The chimney blew out a cloud of black smoke.烟囱里喷出一团黑烟。
• His father is a chimney sweeper.他的父亲是一位扫烟囱的工人。

5 fireplace   

n.壁炉，炉灶

参考例句：

• The fireplace smokes badly.这壁炉冒烟太多。
• I think we should wall up the fireplace.我想应该封住壁炉。