A Xmas story to remember
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I never wrote this, but maybe you can take the time to read it at this time of year. It never loses it’s power, or appeal.
In 1897, a certain Dr. Philip O’Hanlon, a coroner’s assistant, was faced with a minor family crisis. His eight year old daughter, Virginia had begun to doubt in the existence of Santa Claus. Her friends had been telling her that he was no more than a piece of fiction.
Dr. O’Hanlon told his little daughter to write to the Sun, a prominent New York newspaper at the time, in the assurance that the paper would tell her the truth. While he was undoubtedly passing the buck because he couldn’t bear to tell his daughter that Santa Claus was a myth, he unwittingly gave one of paper’s editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to rise above the simple question, and to speak to the philosophical issues behind it.
Mr. Church was a war correspondent during the American Civil War, a time which saw great suffering and a corresponding lack of hope and faith in much of society. Although the paper ran the editorial in the seventh place on the editorial page, below even an editorial on the newly invented “chainless bicycle”, its message struck a chord in the hearts of people who read it. After over a century, it is today the best known and most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the English language, and it is considered as pertinent today as it was in 1897.
Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
- 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
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what 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 external 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 you 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 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 lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!
‘Xmas’ is not defined by one particular faith…but by the human spirit itself.
Merry Xmas, everyone.
Pictured above: Francis Pharcellus Church, the man who wrote this famous editorial to Virginia.
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We are off to the south of Spain for our Xmas break this year. And I am getting into the mode of thinking about my Xmas’s past. The Xmas Days I spent in Australia. Here are a few thoughts:
One thing we have always regretted is that we did not go and see the total solar eclipse in Zambia back in 2001. Everyone we know who went there for the event came back with nothing but glowing reviews about not only the eclipse but the location itself. Actually we intended to go but cancelled at the last minute for certain reasons.
