Why a 110-year-old letter to the editor graces our pages

Dec 20, 2007

This is the second year the famous ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus’ letter has run on our Christmas op-ed page.

It’s likely the 10,000th time the Christmas classic has graced the page of a newspaper.

When planning for this paper, there was thought about whether to include it or exclude it.

After all, the letter had run only 365 days ago. Any other letter to the editor would receive no such honour.

But letters about politics, about events, about news — they have a shelf life.
But Virginia’s letter — it has lost no relevance since last year.

Nor has it lost relevance since it was first published, almost 110 years ago to this day.

That’s when eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asked her father whether Santa Claus existed and her father told her to pose the question to the New York Sun.
He assured her ‘If you see it in the Sun, it’s so.”

That set the stage for writer Francis Pharcellus Church to write that famous response.

While his oft-reprinted words no doubt reassured not only little Virginia, but countless other children, about the existence of Santa, his eloquent speech rises beyond addressing the existence of the jolly old elf and instead, addresses faith and hope itself.

Ten years ago, the New York Times ran a column about the letter at the occasion of the 100th anniversary since it was printed.

Columnist Thomas Vinciguerra points out that historians have said that the late 19th century, when the Virginia letter was published, was a time of religious doubt for many middle-class Americans, and that when Church addresses “the skepticism of a skeptical age” he was not speaking to children, but to adult society.

What’s really changed since then?

In the 21st century, we are just as apt to only believe what we can see.

CBC Radio broadcast a piece last week that said scientists have determined the best place in the world for Santa Claus to begin his trip in order to complete it in a timely fashion.

Websites exploring the science of Santa Claus have determined the speed the elf’s sleigh must travel at in order to reach all of the world’s children.

While all in good fun, these theories — and there are thousands more out there — prove that this is a society that needs to rationally explain things.

We’re still skeptical.

But Christmas is the time to let that go.

Children of a certain age are open to the reality of things unseen, to the whimsical, to the idea of magic.

But as one’s years creep by, the openness diminishes.

But, even in adulthood, the absence of belief in the unseen means a dull, uninspired existence.

When Church’s response is reprinted, a certain passage is unfortunately sometimes left out.

Read it in the letter below, but here are some of the poignant points.

“The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see…Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.”

And there lays the enduring power of this timeless letter.

Christmas is the one time of year that magic reigns.

And thus, it’s the one time of year that a letter and response that gets to the centre of the philosophy of human faith can run.

It’s a time of accepting unexplained magic and embracing tradition.
Who are we, as a paper, to mess with that?

So Virginia’s question and Church’s answer, once again, are printed below.