YES, VIRGINIA
“Yes, indeed!
“Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They
have been affected by the skepticism of a skep-^
tical age—they do not believe except what they see
—they think that nothing can be which is not com
prehensible 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 intelli
gence 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 high
est heauty and joy. Alas!
hotv dreary would be t h e
world- if there were no Santa
Claus! It would be as dreary
as if there were no Virginias.
There would be no childlike
then, no poetry, no romance to make toler
able4his existence. We should have no enjoyment,
except in sense and sight. The eternal light with
whijch childhood fills the world would he extin*
guished.
It was only September, and 1897's Christmas was three
months in the future. But Virginia 0‘Hanlon's concern was
with an important problem that, to her, knew no season. That
was why she wrote her letter to the New York Sun.
The answer to Virginia's question, written in a moment
of deep spiritual insight by Francis B. Church, stands even
today as a testament expressing two thousand years of faith.
It has been reprinted here because it always will deserve to
be read again.
i
I
I
s
!
“Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as
♦
/
well not believe in fairies!
“Ycu. might get your papa to hire men to
watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve 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 tliai
t h e r e is no Santa
Claus—the most real
things in the world
are those 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 that 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, or
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 supernal beauty and glory
beyond.
“Is it all real?—all, Virginia, in all this work!
there is nothing else real and abiding.
“No Santa Claus; Thank God!—he lives, and
he lives forever—a thousand years from now, Vir
ginia, nay, ten thousand years from now, he will
continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
A MERRY, MEKHY CHRISTMAS T© ALL - - - -
With Best Wishes for a Prosperous New Year
The Staff of the Daily Alaska Empire
Everyone Wants
T® See Just One
'M Old’ Yule
“How I would long to see just
one mere ‘old-fashioned Christ
mas.’ ”
These are familiar words at this
time of the year. Before the Yule
tide season is over some member
of the family, grandfather or
grandmother, probably, is certain to
pass that remark, as they have
done each Christmas of the past.
And yet, if we search back into
the recoids. . . to the turn of the
century, sSy ... we find that, even
then, someone was wishing for ‘an
old-fashioned Christmas.” It is then
that we realize that the celebra
tion of the birth of Christ has not
changed greatly with* the passage
of centuries. Basically, Christmas
is the same, year alter year. It is
only the wcrlj| and the people who
are not the same.
He may not admit it, but when
grandfather first began to raise a
family, he overheard his elders
muring over the changing Christ
mas customs and heralding the ap
proach to “complete commercial
ism” cf the Yuletide celebration. »
Even then they were worried.
No one can deny that Christmas
has been greatly ‘ commercialized”
since the days of early America.
Yet, so lias the entire nation. In
the days of our ancestors there
were none cf the vast trading
centers and commercial marts that
we know today. Our very way of
life has been greatly changed with
modernization. Our holidays, and
Christmas is the principal one,
have managed to keep abreast.
Still, without reservation, Christ
mas is basically unchanged in its
true meaning as a celebration of
the birth of the Christ-Child re
deemer, ccme to save the world.
No matter hew great or how small
the presents piled beneath the
tree, each Christian heart never
ceases to remember that Christmas
is Christ’s day.
t
<2$
easons
Lest
C^tlong with the many wishes
that you already received,
we would like to add ours.
May this he a very
Merry Christmas for you
and may the New Year be one
of happiness and prosperity.
-The
CITY of
JUNEAU
ALASKA
A