Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Is there really a Santa Claus?
Today, Santa Claus still brings toys and gifts to good little
boys and girls around the world. Sometimes children have doubts
about Santa Claus and wonder if he is real.
One little 8 year old girl named Virginia O'Hanlon decided the
way to find out if there really was a Santa Claus was to ask
the best source she could find - the New York Sun newspaper.
Virginia wrote a letter to the New York Sun newspaper in 1897.
Virginia's letter and response are shown below written by the
Sun editor, Francis P. Church.
Originally published in The New York Sun in 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:
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?
Signed Virginia O'Hanlon
The answer as published in the New York Sun was:
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 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.
