[Nfbc-info] OT, unless you consider the timing: Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

Wed Dec 25 01:24:45 UTC 2013

This is on the Macy's window display in NY. Just read it yesterday.

Sent from my iPhone

> On Dec 24, 2013, at 8:07 PM, "Michael Hingson" <info at michaelhingson.com> wrote:
> 
> We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication
> below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful
> author is numbered among the friends of The Sun: 
> 
> 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
>         115 West Ninety-fifth St.
> 
> 
> 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 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 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 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, not
> even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could
> tear apart. Only faith, fancy, 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 he lives forever. A thousand years
> from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will
> continue to make glad the heart of childhood. 
> 
>   -- Editorial page of the New York Sun, September 21, 1897
> 
> The Michael Hingson Group, INC.
> "Speaking with Vision"
> Michael Hingson, President
> (415) 827-4084
> mike at michaelhingson.com
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>  
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> 
> 
> 
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