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 journalist 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
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| photo credit Laurent Peignault |
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical 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.
Little Virginia O'Hanlon's Christmas question and the thoughtful response published in the paper has become a Christmas story in its own right. In the many years since it was published, it's been regularly used to clear the doubts of any youngsters by Christmas-loving parents hoping to keep the magic alive just a little longer. The letter, which was translated into 20 languages, inspired children's books and a movie, a musical, and songs. It also may have inspired young Virginia to grow up and become a teacher.
According to The Washington Post throughout her life, Laura Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas, which was her married name, would talk about the letter to others, even reciting it to young children. As she grew, the letter was no longer just proof of Santa's existence, but a guiding light of sorts.
"The older I get, the more I appreciate its philosophy," she once explained, The Washington Post reports. That philosophy of believing in something even at a sceptical age may have even inspired her to become a teacher.
CBS News tracked down O'Hanlon's family in 2018. and they explained that she was "a modern woman" who was very "ahead of her time." In the early 1900s, she earned a master's degree and then a doctorate in education. She then spent decades as a school teacher and principal in New York City.
[source: Newseum & SouthernLiving]
