Perspectives: Sam’s Perspective – Yes, Virginia
It must be Christmas time. Lots of colorful lights,… children all dressed in red.
Dogs in fake antlers. Christmas trees roped to tops of cars passing by on the freeway. Yes, it must be Christmas time. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week we hear sale here, sale there, not available in stores, be one of the first to call, supplies are limited,… hurry, hurry, hurry, spend, spend, spend. Save time and buy it online. It must be Christmas time. But something’s missing. Well, maybe its time for us to go back a few years,… Dust off a document that may help those of us without the Christmas spirit, remember what it’s like to be a child. Lets go back to 1897,… close your eyes and try to imagine what New York City must have been like when an 8-year-old girl by the name of Virginia O’Hanlon began her search for truth. Back over a hundred years,… when this child wrote a letter and the result was felt all over the world. It was a bleak autumn day when Virginia O’Hanlon ask her father, “Is there a Santa Claus?” He was evasive. So, Virginia wrote the Sun, a respected newspaper of its time of which her father said,… “If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.” Her letter read, “Dear Editor,… I am 8-years-old. Some of my 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?”
Her letter found its way to veteran editor Francis P. Church, son of a Baptist minister. He’d covered the Civil War for the New York Times and had worked for the New York Sun for 20 years. He was a hardened, cynical newspaper editorialist who’d seen it all, until that is, Virginia’s letter landed on his desk. Here is his reply: “Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe unless 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. How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as in 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 watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Clause 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 man 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 and romance can push aside that curtain and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Ah, Virginia,… in 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, no 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
Francis Church’s editorial was an immediate sensation and became one of the most famous ever written anywhere in the world. The New York Sun published it annually before Christmas till it went out of business in 1940. Church and his wife never had children but he understood a child’s world. He died in April, 1906. As for the little girl, Virginia O’Hanlon,… she got a Bachelor of Arts degree from Hunter College, then her Master’s from Columbia the following year and in 1912, became a teacher, later a principal, in the New York City school system. She married, became Virginia Douglas and had children of her own. After 47 years as an educator, she retired and during all those years, she received a steady stream of mail about her Santa Claus letter
She replied to all by sending an attractive, printed copy of the Church editorial. Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas, who posed the question that prompted an editorial known round the world, died on May 13th., 1971 at the age of 81, in a New York nursing home. They said she had a peaceful smile on her lips but that she died alone. But you tell me,… was she really alone? That’s my perspective.
