IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS???

Every year at this time, my husband carries up from the basement, the very large and heavy box of my Christmas book collection. These books are treasures that I read and look at each Christmas season, and something that brings me great joy. I, of course, have my favorites, and this morning I was reading The New Yorker Christmas book collection, and laughing again at all the Christmas cartoons through the years. I have the usual; The Night Before Christmas and The Grinch (an actual autographed edition) and various editions of A Christmas Story, but my absolute favorite of all time is the little gem of the story of Virgina who wrote to the New York Sun Times because she was beginning (at age eight) to have doubts about the reality of Santa Claus. She wrote to the Sun Times because her father told her that, "if you see it in the Times, it's so." Virginia says in her letter, "Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?" I am guessing that most of you are familiar with this famous letter to the New York Sun Times, sent by Virgina, but each Christmas, when I reread it, I grasp a little more of the meaning so I want to share here, the answer that The Sun Times wrote to Virgina. I absolutely love it!

" Virginia, your little friends are wrong (who were telling her there was no Santa.) 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 chimneys on Christmas evening 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 the curtain and view and picture the supernatural beauty and glory beyond. Is it 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, Virgina, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

And, I hasten to add that Helen Keller had this very same "take" on the world when she said, "The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

So there you are; I believe in Santa Claus and all the other "things" in life that bring me great joy and an everlasting sense of wonder.