CERTAINLY SANTA

If you are old enough for your parents to show this to you, you are old enough to know that adults sometimes make poor choices. We made one last Saturday when we published in the comics section a story that began “Warning: Not suited for readers under age 8!”

That didn’t stop you for a minute, did it? And it should not have – what sort of person would put a warning on the comics pages? One who isn’t thinking, that’s who. The story beneath the warning explained one person’s view of Santa Claus, not a nice view either. It was the sort of helpful adult conversation you have learned to ignore at the dinner table, and we won’t repeat it all here except to say that it explained that Santa Claus wasn’t real. What nonsense. Of course Santa is real!

A long time ago an editorial writer at the New York Sun newspaper was asked by an 8-year-old girl named Virginia about Santa Claus. The editorial writer, Frank Church, wrote a story about it that was so good that people have remembered it ever since. Part

of the story went as follows:

“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 external 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.”

So excuse our comics section from last week. It spent too much time explaining and not enough understanding; too much time seeing and not enough knowing.