YES VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon had asked her father if there was a Santa Claus. Her friends were telling her the same things that all our friends were telling us at about the same age. They thought they were so smart.

Her father was in a quandary - disillusion his daughter or allow her to continue in her innocence. So, he did what most of us would do; he passed the buck and told her to ask the editor of The New York Sun, a respected newspaper of the day.

Virginia then wrote this letter to the editor of The New York Sun. The editor assigned Francis Pharcellus Church the task of responding.

The Sun had a policy of starting its editorials on the front page. Church’s response on September 21, 1897 was the seventh editorial that day and on an inside page. The Sun staffers must have felt Church’s piece was just fluff and far less important than at least six other issues of that day but it has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

By today’s standards, Church’s rhetoric is a little too mushy but the message comes through loud and clear and is as relevant now as it was then. We regard ourselves as so sophisticated by losing our childhood beliefs but are we?

In 1897, Albert Einstein’s publication of The Theory of Special Relativity, which would change our view of the universe, lay 8 years in the future, the same amount of time little Virginia had been alive. Since then, our scientific knowledge has grown exponentially yet for all our advances, we are not much more than children in our understanding of the wonders of the universe. The more we learn, the more it becomes apparent that a full grasp will likely be beyond us forever.

So maybe we should sit back and contemplate that Virginia’s childlike innocence had a truth at its core. Today’s skeptics may not be much different from Virginia’s playmates. Their minds and imaginations are limited by what they can experience. Their worlds must be very bland indeed.

The New York Sun is long since gone, a victim of radio and television news. So are Virginia O’Hanlon in 1971, having borne just one daughter and Francis Pharcellus Church in 1906, childless but his editorial response lives on as does Santa Claus and our need for the Santas of our hopes, dreams and purposes. And if you don’t get choked up a bit when you read this then you are made of much tougher stuff than I.

(Much of the above is verbatim from the Newseum website with some addenda of mine interspersed - Roderick T. Beaman.)

(OVER)



DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?

VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.


Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.