Carol Platt Liebau: Do You Believe In Santa Claus?

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Do You Believe In Santa Claus?

I do. As many of us recall, back in 1897, eight year old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote The New York Sun to ask if Santa really existed. Here, in part, is the answer:

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists 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 which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. . . .

[T]here is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest man 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, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.


Read the whole thing here.

1 Comments:

Blogger Ruth Anne Adams said...

'If you see it in THE SUN, it is so.'

How's that for blind faith in the MSM?

Well. It was the 1890s.

6:32 AM  

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