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CHRISTMAS
“Yes,
Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”
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 around 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 that are unseen and
unseeable in the world. You
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, 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.
New
York Sun staff writer Francis P. Church made this editorial reply to a
letter written him in 1897 by Virginia O’Hanlon
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