As a child, I often asked my mother about Santa because so many of the kids at school told me there was no such thing. She brought me this article from a newspaper and told me to read it and then make my own decision. This article remained in my heart and I always smiled at Christmas when I thought about Santa.  When my own daughters came to me with the same question, I had lost the article my mother had given me but I found it in a Norman Rockwell Holiday book. Both of my daughters, one now grown with two little girls of her own, and my youngest 12, cherish this article. In our family the editor of The Sun and Norman Rockwell are the experts on Santa.

Yes, Virginia,

There Is a Santa Claus

Francis P. Church       

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

          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 child like 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 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.

          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.

                   _The New York Sun, September 21, 1897

 

Page created:  May 12, 2002