We take pleasure in answering at as soon as and consequently prominently the conversation beneath, expressing at the similar time our terrific gratification that its faithful author is number between the close friends of The Sunlight.
Expensive Editor: I am 8 yrs previous.
Some of my minor close friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa states, “If you see it in The Solar, it is so.”
Be sure to convey to me the truth is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia, your minimal close friends are wrong. They have been influenced by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not feel apart from they see. They feel that absolutely nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their minimal minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this wonderful universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless earth about him, as calculated by the intelligence capable of greedy the whole of fact and information.
Of course, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as surely as adore and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its greatest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the earth if there ended up no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there have been no Virginias. There would be no childlike religion then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We need to have no enjoyment, apart from in feeling and sight. The eternal light-weight with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not feel in Santa Claus! You may well as properly not feel in fairies! You might get your papa to employ the service of adult males to watch in all the chimneys on Xmas Eve to capture Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that demonstrate? No person sees Santa Claus, but that is no indication that there is no Santa Claus. The most actual factors in the world are those that neither little ones nor adult males can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the garden? Of class not, but that is no proof that they are not there. No person can conceive or consider all the miracles there are unseen and unseeable in the earth.
You might tear aside the baby’s rattle and see what will make the sounds within, but there is a veil masking the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united energy of all the strongest males that at any time lived, could tear aside. Only religion, fancy, poetry, like, romance, can press apart that curtain and look at and picture the supernal magnificence and glory further than. Is it all serious? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this earth there is nothing at all else genuine and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he life, and he lives eternally. A thousand a long time from now, Virginia, nay, 10 periods 10 thousand decades from now, he will proceed to make happy the heart of childhood.
The preceding was originally revealed in The Solar in New York Metropolis on Sept. 21, 1897. In accordance to the Newseum, Francis Pharcellus Church is credited with crafting the response to Skip O’Hanlon.