Francis P. Church

We all have our very own traditions that make Christmas feel special.

Perhaps it’s attending a Christmas Eve church service or reading Advent passages from scripture. Many families ride around in their cars and look at Christmas lights, bake holiday goods or fiercely compete in building gingerbread houses together. Some open a present early on Christmas Eve night and others may add a special new ornament to the tree each year.

A lot of us watch the same old holiday movies and pretend they’re just as good as when they first premiered, but the truth is, there’s deeper meaning behind each of these practices. Traditions shape us, and continuing them with those we love most is what we really look forward to every year.

In the newspaper business, our holiday tradition is to revive a special letter to the editor written 124 years ago.

Eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote in to New York’s The Sun with a serious concern about Santa Claus, and a quick yet thoughtful response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church had an everlasting effect, now believed to be the most reprinted newspaper editorial in history.

All of us at the Tyler Morning Telegraph wish you and yours a safe, wonderful Christmas. Reprinted below, please enjoy Virginia’s letter and Church’s response:

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

VIRIGINA, 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, 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 you 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 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, 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 lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.