Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

One of my traditions each year is to run one of the most famous columns of all time, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” From The Sun, September 21, 1897. This was always one of my father’s favorites and we started running it as an advertisement back in the State National Bank days and I have continued to publish it every year.

Hall about it

One day in the autumn of 1897 little Virginia O’Hanlon (1889–1971), who lived in New York City and who was eight years old, had an argument with some of her schoolmates about Santa Claus. Virginia felt sure there was a Santa Claus but her friends said there was not. Virginia felt greatly disturbed about it, and that night she wrote a letter to the editor of the The Sun, the newspaper that came every morning to their breakfast table. She soon had a reply.

One of the editorial writers for The Sun was Mr. Francis P. Church, a man with a big heart and a fine appreciation of poetry. He sat down and wrote an answer to Virginia, and it was printed in the paper next morning, September 21, 1897.  And this answer had in it so much sympathy and thought that it has been printed again and again. Here it is:

We take pleasure in answering at once and 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:

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 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 there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may 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, fancy, 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.

Merry Christmas to everybody from Craig. If you enjoy our newsletter or the LCJ, please subscribe to the newsletter or give it as a gift for only $5 per month or $50 per year.