--- TIC-TECH message:
It's Christmas Eve. Believe. - Mark
Mark Ahlness
mahlness@cks.ssd.k12.wa.us
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
Date: Sun, 24 Dec 2000 19:44:03 -0500
From: Ednet Management Team <ednetmgr@educ.umass.edu>
Reply-To: ednet@lists.umass.edu
To: ednet@lists.umass.edu
This is a time-honored story from the New York Sun in 1897.
Although well-known, it lives on through re-reading and reminding
ourselves of its wisdom.
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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
Virginia, 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 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.
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.
The Editor
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