Yes Everyone, There is a Santa Claus!

There's a famous true story of a little girl named Virginia who wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun in 1897, I've copied it below in case you've never read the full article and in case you don't know the story at all.

Virginia believes in Santa Claus, but she is confused by what her friends are telling her and Francis Pharcellus Church, who replied to Virginia's letter, tells her yes, yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus and he tells her why. His words are really beautiful and I think Mr. Church was really responding to the adults who were reading his article. All those "grown ups" who forgot about Santa, forgot about believing and magic. One of my blogs was called "Love = Magic", it does. Like Santa, you can't see him, but he's there all the same. In another blog, I quoted a line from the movie Miracle on 34th Street, "I believe, I believe, it may be silly, but I believe." Call me silly, I don't mind, I'm happy being silly. I just believe.

I've always believed. I truly believed in Santa and my parents never told me otherwise and I never asked. My older brothers told us they believed and though I searched for a lie on their faces, I only saw belief. They were Santa when they answered my questions, he can live in all of us.

I remember one night they told my sister Linda and I how we just missed Santa running out the back porch door because he heard us sneaking down. I believed that night that I actually saw his boot as he was running out the door. My imagination and my pure belief in magic. My brothers helped my parents wrapping presents, hiding them and the excitement they felt knowing what Christmas morning would be for us filled them with happiness, they loved us, magic was running through their veins. The magic of Santa Claus. As I got older, I too became Santa. Like my brothers, I got to help my parents do some wrapping, hiding and the best part, telling my younger siblings, Debbie and Joey, how Santa was coming to visit on Christmas Eve, that they had to get to bed before he would come to our house.

One year, my brother Joey was about 5 and was beside himself with excitement. It was difficult getting him to go to bed that night. I don't know who told him to put on his PJs and get ready for bed, but I do remember seeing him Christmas morning in his PJs but his clothes from the day before were underneath, he never got undressed, just put the PJs on top of his clothes and got into bed. By Christmas morning his pants were hanging down from the bottom of his PJ pants as well as his shirt underneath making his PJ top look too tight and all bunched up. The way Joey looked and acted that morning is forever etched in my memory, it was one of my favorite Christmas's, just watching him "in the moment". Santa was there, the night before and that morning too.

Santa Claus is about giving a gift without receiving a gift in return. But there is a gift in return, bigger and better than whatever we give. Santa is in me now, as he lives in so many others.

A good friend of mine, Phil, told me a beautiful story about his son Danny. Danny got older and asked the question we all don't want our children to ask, he asked, dad, is there really a Santa Claus. Phil, and I know so many more parents, go through absolute torture on how to handle this question, I'm hearing my family and friends heartaches about this lately. Some feel a terrible guilt, like they lied and now have to fess up. I wouldn't look at it as fessing up as much as passing along a magical, loving tradition, handing down the Santa suit. When Phil answered Danny's question, Danny said you bought me all those presents, thank you dad. Danny became Santa that day.

Read this article, print it, save it for the day your child asks that question, save it for when you feel like you can't believe in anything. Magic is real.

Believe in Santa Claus!

Newsman Francis Pharcellus Church wrote The Sun's response to Virginia.

Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.

"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.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] 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.