撰文/播音 Karen Hopkin凯伦·霍普金

翻译 张心茹

校对 张清越

In the United States, there’s a holiday that goes hand in hand with romance. So much so that nine months later, there’s a spike in the number of babies born. Valentine’s day? Wrong! It seems that people in the U.S. and in other predominantly Christian countries have been having some very merry Christmases indeed. That’s according to a study in the journal Scientific Reports. [Ian B. Wood et al, Human Sexual Cycles are Driven by Culture and Match Collective Moods]

在美国，有一个节日与浪漫密不可分。以至于九个月后，新生儿数目会达到峰值。是情人节吗？错！看起来，再美国和其他基督教盛行的国家，人们度过了非常欢乐的圣诞节。这是根据科学报道杂志（Scientific Reports）上的一项研究。[ 伊恩 B.伍德等，人类性周期受文化和约会累积性情绪影响]

Scientists have long wondered why, in Western countries, birth rates spike in September and early October.

科学家们长期想知道为什么在西方国家中，出生率在九月和十月初达到峰值。

“The prevailing hypothesis for this phenomenon postulates that there is a biological adaptation to the solar cycles.”

以前对这一现象的假说是生物对太阳周期存在适应性变化。

Luis Rocha of Indiana University co-led the study. He notes that nine months before this baby boomlet is the winter solstice. And when the days grow shorter and the night grows long, well, humans seem to turn to procreation for recreation.

印第安纳州大学的路易斯·罗查共同领导了这项研究。他提到，出生率达到峰值的九个月前是冬至。当白昼变短，黑夜变长时，人们似乎倾向于以繁殖后代的方式放松。

“However this hypothesis was built on observations pretty much restricted to Northern Hemisphere countries and also culturally Christian countries.”

然而这个假说是建立在对仅限于北半球国家以及基督教国家的观察基础上

And some data suggested there might be something cultural going on.

而一些数据说明有些文化因素也在发挥作用。

“So for instance in Israel, it was previously observed that communities associated with different religions have birth peaks at different times of the year.”

例如在以色列，之前人们观察到不同宗教信仰的社会群体会在一年的不同时候出生率到达峰值。

To try to separate the cultural from the biological, Rocha teamed up with Joana Gonçalves-Sá of the Gulbenkian Institute of Science in Portugal. Together, they combed through data on a planetary level…comparing countries in the Northern and Southern hemispheres…and countries with predominantly different cultures, in this case Christian and Muslim.

为了单独研究文化因素，排除生物因素的干扰，罗查与葡萄牙的古尔本基安科学研究所的Joana Gonçalves-Sá合作，比较了南北半球国家，以及不同宗教信仰国家，例如基督教国家和伊斯兰教国家。

But they didn’t look at when babies are born. They looked to see when, during the year, people around the world Google the word “sex.” Joana Sá:

但他们没有看新生儿出生的时间，而是看了一年中何时世界上的人们用谷歌搜索“性”。

 “What we found, first, was that Google…searches for sex on google…are a very good proxy for sexual appetite and sexual, offline sexual interest. And when we looked at close to 130 countries around the world, what we saw is that each country has a particular signature with peaks and valleys of interest in sexual content.”

Joana Sá说：“我们发现，首先谷歌上关于性的搜索，是性偏好和线下性欲望的很好的反映。当我们看世界上接近130个国家时，我们发现每个国家都有独特的性欲峰值和谷值的表现规律”

Sá says that those patterns were most similar for countries that shared a similar culture…

Joana Sá说相似文化的国家中有着相似的表现规律。

“This means that if you live in a culturally Christian country, whether you live in the Northern Hemisphere or the Southern Hemisphere, you are more likely to have an increase in sexual appetite around Christmas. But if you live in a Muslim country, you are much more likely to conceive around Eid-al-Fitr, than at a different, at another time of the year.”

这意味着如果你生活在一个基督教文化的国家中，不管是在南半球还是北半球，你更可能在圣诞节前后性欲增强。但如果你生活在穆斯林国家，相比一年中的其他时候，你更可能在开斋节前后有性幻想

Now, if you’re still wondering what’s so special about these holidays…Rocha says interest in sex coincides with a particular mood…a finding he made with the help of Twitter.

现在，如果你仍然想知道这些节日的特殊之处…罗查说对性的兴趣和一种特殊的情绪吻合…这是一项他借助推特完成的发现。

“We collected close to 50 billion tweets and showed that, independently of the geography and independently of the particular culture, when we observed the surge of interest in sex we also observe the appearance of a particular mood that can best be classified as calm and happy and de-stressed mood that is maximized around Christmas for Christian countries and maximized at the end of Ramadan with Eid for Muslim countries.”

“我们在积累了将近五百亿条推特信息后发现，抛开地理和文化因素，在观测到性欲驱动的同时也容易观测到一种可被归于镇静，开心，和减压的特殊情绪，它会在基督教国家圣诞节前后和穆斯林国家开斋节尾声时被放大”

All of which makes the following year’s holiday family gathering just a little bit bigger.

所有这些都会让下一年的节日家庭聚会更加盛大。