- Share This Post
- Pin It
- 0
- 1
-
Sparkle (1)
In 1897, a young girl named Virginia O'Hanlon lived in New York City. She wrote this letter to the New York Sun.
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
An editor named Francis P. Church responded to Virginia's letter in this editorial.
Is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. They do not believe except what they see.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exists. Alas, how dreary the world would be 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.
You might get your Papa to hire men to watch 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? Not everybody sees Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men see.
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.
For Patty.
