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 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.
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.
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