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Quote of the Day: Yes, Virginia
“Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus.” — Francis Pharcellus Church
In 1897, an eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote the following letter to the New York 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 Street
On September 21, 1897, the newspaper responded, running the following unsigned editorial:
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 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 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 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 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.
The editorial was a throw-away, the third of the three editorials run that day by the paper. Although unsigned, it was written by veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church, who — being a newspaper reporter in those blue-collar days of reporting was bound to be a skeptical man in a skeptical age. Regardless, he captured a greater truth in this editorial.
For that reason, the editorial never became the throw-away it had been intended as, a cute answer to a child’s question. Instead, it has reverberated with readers over the last 124 years.
Church would die nine years later in 1906 at the age of 67, three shy of his allocated three-score-and-ten. He had been a newspaperman for 44 of those years, rising to the position of publisher of the New York Sun. Yet he gained immortality with this one short editorial. The rest of his life is largely forgotten.
Virginia O’Hanlon would grow up, marry, have children and lead a career as a professional educator. She earned a Ph.D. (not a less-rigorous Ed.D.), and retired as the principal of a New York City elementary school, back in an era when public education was world-class. She died at the age of 71 but was forever known as eight-year-old “Virginia” of the famous editorial. Her daughter would work for the New York Sun for several years in the 1930s, where she was known as “Virginia’s Daughter.”
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Published in General
Amen.
Merry Christmas, Seawriter.
Our local newspaper reprints this famous letter and editorial every Christmas. It’s one of the few times they get things right . . .
Merry Christmas!
What I find fascinating was Virginia sent her letter in July shortly after her eighth birthday and the editorial ran on September 21 – three months before December.
1 Corinthians 2:9
Merry Christmas!
Frivolous lying to children.
Madness.
And the Ebeneezer Scrooge award for 2021 goes to . . .
Except isn’t Skyler kidding?
Is he? Based on his comments on my last week’s “The Holiday Season” QotD I have doubts.
No. I don’t like indoctrinating children to believe lies.
KJV is good enough for this heathen. It forms the basis of our official discourse, and sets the style of our most famous public quoatations.
For children are different from adults. “Lying” to children is the same thing — in some cases — as preparing a version of truth, replete with age-appropriate object lessons, which arms children with the less-sophisticated but morally correct foundations of adult morality which will of course become necessary in the years to follow.
The insistence upon “not lying to children” is a facet of failing to understand that children are different from adults, and must be treated differently.
I bet I know what is coming next: stay tuned.
To each his own.
You are ignorant of how the world actually works and it shows.
It is really sad. How old are you?
Whatever. Some people react strongly to having their world view challenged. Perhaps it comes from being taught to believe in magic as children (and usually still believing in other incompatible magic as adults)?
When my wife and I still had young children, we kept them away from people as militantly atheist as you. Would recommend it today, too.
The one reacting out of perportion here is you. It really is quite adolescent in its nature.
Militant atheists are a type of theist. You are sure you are right. It is a faith of sorts. What drives the anger? The adolescents approached hypocrisy may Be the place to look for our key insight. As adolescents grow into adults it becomes very clear to them that the world is broken and in some cases dead. This causes them to want to reject it which is entirely normal. Indeed I believe this is important because the young people come along and help renew and change and bring new life into society. Myths about the son rescuing the father actually actually touch on this. But of course the reality is that the adolescent becomes an adult and they work to build a society that to their children will appear dead and corrupt, too. It is the reality of this fallen world.
So adolescents are angry that the world is full of hypocrisy that they have been wide to that the institutions are corrupt and horrible. All true. It is the adult who realizes however, that there are some things that cannot be changed. We are all doing the best we can as we move forward in our lives. This is not wholly good or wholly evil but simply how things are, how things have to be. All of us are hypocrites. In the Christian way of looking at things all of us are sinners. This is both an awful and comforting truth Bruce but the adolescent is only capable of looking at the awful side. Thus his rage is part of his grief at the fallen nature of the world. And he gets stuck in that grief and is unable to move to other stages of depression and eventually acceptance as does the adult. So he remains in anger, caught, and ready to fight against the fallen world and those others who fail to be perfect in his eyes, which is everyone.
So the way that I look at the militant atheist is it atheist is that that atheist is in fact angry at God for the state of the world. He blames God the world is not the way that the militant atheist thinks it should be. This explains the power of his faith there is no God because his understanding of God is such that the world would be different if only he was in charge. Of course this is the core way of thinking that drives communism and the left and all of the energy it says” I could do things better if I simply have the power.” Christians called us the son of bride and it is the 1st and most powerful sin and the one that all of us have the most temptation.
At least, that’s how I see it Charlie Brown.
Sad. I don’t interfere with anyone raising their children. This website isn’t a nursery so I speak freely. But you seem afraid to let your children think for themselves. To each his own, but if you have to brainwash them to agree with you, it hardly seems to be a well-founded belief system.
That’s hilarious that your entire world view requires that all actions be formed by your magic.
There are many situations where children interact with adults that aren’t nurseries. Militant atheism is poison for society, and children are the most susceptible. As Bryan points out, yours is a belief system as much as any religion. I find it utterly intolerant, far more so than any Christians.
Mind you keep them away from people who mistake absence of evidence for evidence of absence.
Materialists are easily confused.
Alas for you sneer, much of what I said above has nothing to do with Christian faith, and everything to do with the study of Man from a scientific standpoint. It is all true without any real faith. Belittling faith not only does not address what I said, it confirms my analysis of you as a militant atheist.
I am sorry you are caught in perpetual anger. I know it is not the best way to live. I will pray for your peace.
like many things in life Terry Pratchett says it best. Discussion between character Susan (deaths adoptive daughter) and DEATH playing the Hogfather, a version of Santa Krause
Hogfather Quotes Showing 1-30 of 249
“All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable.”
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
“Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—”
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
“So we can believe the big ones?”
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
“They’re not the same at all!”
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
“Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what’s the point—”
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
Well, I liked the OP.
You, Sir, are not a militant atheist.
I liked it too.
If someone came here and said, I like vanilla ice cream best, I might say that I prefer strawberry ice cream and people would say, “well, it’s an opinion that I don’t share” and be done with it.
If Ricochet were a site dedicated to vanilla ice cream to the exclusion of strawberry ice cream advocates, I might expect someone to say that I was in the wrong place.
Ricochet is not a site dedicated to theology, let alone a specific theology. When someone comes along and says they prefer that their children believe in fairy tales, I don’t think it’s improper to point out that contrary opinions exist. I don’t require anyone to argue, I don’t ask that anyone change their minds, I just state my opinion. What is odd, is that adherents of religion seem to believe that any criticism or disagreement of religion (and seemingly Santa Claus which has never been incorporated into any serious theology I’m aware of) in our free country, must be mocked and insulted. People could, and should, just say to themselves, “well, that’s an opinion I don’t share” and be done with it. They could also discuss why does that opinion mean so much, and I’m sure many people ask themselves that. Many, though, are so fearful that someone might not agree with them that their only response is to attack.
I think people should be honest with children from the earliest age, my job as a parent is to prepare them to be and think like an adult someday. I don’t know why that is so horrifically controversial.
If you like vanilla ice cream, I’m happy for you. I like strawberry. Oh, wait. Some totalitarian prefers strawberry, I must be a nazi or communist!
It is curious how weak some people’s “faith” is such that they can’t countenance someone expressing a contrary idea. “Better shut him up or people might start thinking.” I didn’t require that anyone agree or follow my opinion, I simply stated my own. That it comes to personal attacks says a lot about others’ tolerance for a free society.
If you think “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” is a good essay, then I’m fine and we can be friends. I don’t like it and find it to be really stretching to associate it with all that is good in society. You should be fine with my opinion as well. I promise you that there are many christians who fervently purge their homes of anything related to Santa Claus. Or saints of any kind. Or the Pope. Or transubstantiation. It’s a big world out there.
Actually you did nothing if the sort. You made a moral point not one of taste. Saying that you don’t think children should be taught lies is saying that the people that teach their children about Santa Claus or somehow making a moral error. An adult can see the difference.
Then when people objected to your moral criticism of them, you responded by attacking their faith. You made it quite clear of your contempt for faith. The person being intolerant here is you not anybody else.
Basically whenever faith comes up you frankly come across as no different than any leftist. Angry. Smug. Elitist. Unlikeable.
Every post that you make demonstrates either you are ignorant about how you come across or you want to come across this way and be as insulting as possible while wanting to retreat behind post like this one where you’re pretending to be the one who’s tolerant and reasonable while everybody else is unreasonable and defensive.
Not only is it transparently obvious, it’s not going to change anybody’s mind, and while it may make you feel better about yourself and the short-term, in the long run this sort of behavior leads to alienation of others and a decreasing circle of people willing to call you their friend.
For your own sake I urge you to look at your behavior and this thread in another threads.
Skyler and Bryan, you each could have expressed your differences in a different way, but that ship has sailed.
That said, I agree with both of your points on better expression.
Not that I’m an authority on “How To Discuss”.
No adult should ever be so fragile.
Actually, he only tries to. Morality, like justice and mercy, lie in a realm beyond even the finest scientific measurement tools. Read F J/J G’s quote again. Reflect on the fact that even if one doesn’t value someone else’s abstract concepts, there are those one does value, and yet they are no more capable of proof than any other.