CHRISTMAS CLASSIC: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editor’s Note: Carrying on a Christmas tradition here at The Graphic-Advocate, we want to provide the classic "Yes, Virgina, There is a Santa Claus."

To provide a little background information for the unfamiliar, the New York Sun responded to a letter to the editor written by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon on Sept. 21, 1897. The work of the unsigned editorial, penned by veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church, would go on to be history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial. Over the years, it has been translated into dozens of languages and featured in books, movies, posters, stamps and other editorials.

Christmas is many different things. To us, above all, Christmas is a time of year where the innocence of the past, the compassion of the present and the optimism for the future converge upon a wintry landscape. From all of us at The Graphic-Advocate, may you have a Merry Christmas.

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.

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 and 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.