Is there a Santa Claus?
Here: Probably the most magical answer ever.
The question of whether Santa Claus exists moves countless children’s hearts every year.
Little Virginia wanted to know exactly and sent her request to a newspaper in a letter to the editor. That was 123 years ago. The answer changed life’s and still touches today.
It sounds like a Christmas fairy tale, but it is a true story. The year is 1897, little Virginia O’Hanlon is eight years old and living in New York when – just like many children today – a question weighs heavily on her mind: „Is there a Santa Claus?“
Virginia O’Hanlon (circa 1895).
Her parents are apparently at a loss for an answer, because in September 1897, the „New York Sun“ receives this letter to the editor:
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.
The original letter.
Virginia’s letter does not go unnoticed. Editor Francis P. Church pens a lengthy response that will make history for both him and Virginia. According to the „Newseum,“ a journalism museum in Washington, Church’s piece is the most reprinted editorial in English and has been translated into many other languages. Until the „Sun“ ceased publication in 1950, it appeared there year after year at Christmas – and since then in numerous other media around the world. And now, in 2020, allover again and again !!
Editorial appearing in the September 21, 1897, edition of The (New York) Sun.
Yes, Virginia: There is a Santa Claus.
„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.“
Francis Pharcellus Church, an editorial writer for the New York Sun, wrote an iconic response to a letter about Santa in 1897. (Daily News Photo Illustration).
That letter changed Virginia’s life.
Virginia O’Hanlon herself later said that Francis P. Church’s response had a „very strong“ and positive influence on the rest of her life. She had considered it her responsibility to let all the wonderful things Church described be part of her life: Faith, love, poetry, romance.
Eight years before her death, she mused in a radio interview about Church’s words, „The older I get, the more I realize what a perfect philosophy of life there is in it.“
