The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
PLASTIC SURGERY
This one’s for the children (inside all of us)…
In 1897, newspaper editor Francis Church received a letter from 8-yearold Virginia O’Hanlon, a physician’s daughter, saying: Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Here are my favorite parts of his famous response:
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] they see. They think nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, whether men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe, man is a mere ant in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, 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 get your papa to hire men to watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? The most real things in the world are those that no one can see. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives forever, continuing to make glad the heart of childhood.