Christmastime! What a wonderful time of year! Not because of the snow or the blustery wind that takes your breath away in one cold nip - but because it brings back the warmth of past Christmas memories which have been packed away as neatly as ornaments in their boxes. Although Easter has always meant more spiritually to me than Christmas, the thought of mankind giving to others because God gave to us fills my soul with liquid cheer and goodwill. Truly, out of a life that is mostly concerned with bureaucratic intangible constructs, it is this time of year in which action is met with word. The supernatural intangible is made real. Society is filled with givers instead of takers. The question asked is "Can I help?" instead of "Why should I?". The best of us is unearthed and we remember a magic and miracles which are normally stuffed down under cynical workday demeanors. I am putting that famous letter in the Sun here to warm the cockles of your heart!
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.
Francis Pharcellus Chruch - Sun, New York, September 21, 1897
http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/
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