The other gifts of the Magi

The holiday season is over, but the spirit lives on all year round! Well, not really. People may talk about a “carta a los Reyes (Magos)” after January 6 has come and gone, but chances are that it doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas. Colloquially, the phrase can be used to refer to wishlists more generally, especially when what is being wished for is seen as unrealistic. In particular, politicians of all stripes have been slinging it at each other for quite some time as a way of dismissing their rivals’ projects or plans.

CiU tacha el programa de Aznar de “carta a los Reyes Magos”

Xabier Agirre considera el programa de Podemos ‘una carta a los Reyes’

Luquero: «El plan del PP para los barrios es una carta a los Reyes Magos»

Roldán (Cs) tacha las cuentas de Sánchez e Iglesias de “carta a los Reyes Magos sin valor”

El PSdeG ve los presupuestos de la Xunta como una «carta a los reyes magos» tras el «fracaso» de Feijóo durante 11 años

Even though the Kings aren’t (supposed to be) magicians in Catalan, “carta als Reis” is used in much the same way:

La CUP de la Garriga diu que el PAM és una carta als Reis

L’estira-i-arronsa entre el Govern i el PSC pels pressupostos complica un acord imminent: «Des del Govern s’havia qualificat de “carta als Reis” algunes de les peticions socialistes».

Sàmper (JxT) qualifica el programa de govern de ser «una autèntica presa de pèl». «El grup municipal de Junts per Terrassa (JxT) considera que el programa govern de la ciutat, presentat fa unes setmanes “és una carta als Reis”».

I love the political examples because they show how the beauty of language change and human ingenuity can lead to a beloved childhood tradition becoming a way of insulting a budgetary proposal, but the phrase can also be used in apolitical contexts. In an interview with Catalan TV host Xavier Grasset about, among other things, his book La pausa dels dies, the interviewer remarks that “La idea del llibre és tornar a la vida lenta.” “És una carta als reis,” Grasset responds.

The problem for the English-language translator in this case isn’t really about the cultural differences among countries in terms of which old men children (traditionally) write letters to at Christmastime, because none of the above examples would be much more idiomatic in English if the key phrase were rendered as “a letter to Santa Claus.” I’ve been gradually making a list (and checking it twice?) of possible solutions that could be used in different contexts:

• wishlist
• pipe dream
• pie in the sky
• castle in the air
• wishful thinking
• Good luck with that!
• Like that’s going to happen.
• Dream on.

Some people might feel that the translation should have a Christmas reference as well to remain faithful to the spirit of the original. If the piece in question is published around Christmastime and the person being quoted seems to be using the phrase as a deliberate tie-in to the season, trying to make their argument or quip seem particularly apropos, I’m not opposed to a literal translation along the lines of “a child’s Christmas wishlist,” though the translator could also tap into other holiday clichés such as “it would be/take a Christmas miracle” to convey how unrealistic a proposal is.

But even though it has yet to show up in most bilingual or monolingual dictionaries, I would argue that the unfestive use of this phrase is well on its way to being lexicalized, and that in most contexts its Christmassy origins are no more relevant for communication purposes than the origins of most idioms, which are spectacularly obscure in many cases. People love to talk about how quickly language evolves, scoffing at or celebrating the neologisms or slang that emerge to reflect new realities, but we don’t talk as much about how it can just as easily fossilize phenomena after society has moved on. For example, the euro has been used in Spain for over twenty years now, but many Spaniards still use idioms referring to older units of currency. The Three Kings are currently alive and well, even as Santa Claus encroaches on their territory, but it’s not too hard to engage in a little bit of lingüística ficción and imagine a world two hundred years from now in which the Grinch has stolen Christmas, or Santa Claus has finally stolen Three Kings Day, rendering the literal carta a los Reyes obsolete, but leaving the idiom intact. Just as most English speakers couldn’t tell you the origins of “pipe dream,” “pie in the sky,” or “castle in the air” (fun fact: the last comes from the French “châteaux en Espagne,” literally “castles in Spain,” which is infrequently used in English as well), people will have to look up (however they’ll be doing that two hundred years from now) why they say carta a los Reyes to refer to something that’s unrealistic. The rabbit holes of the future! Maybe while they’re at it, they’ll also find out why they say “X son los padres” to mean that X does not actually exist, contrary to what some people may naïvely believe. But that’s a topic for another day.