Did you hear about the teacher in a Rockland County, N.Y. school, who, during a lesson on the North Pole, decided she would save her 2nd graders the embarrassment and obvious delusional teaching of Santa Clause and inform them he does not exist? The educator even told the 7 and 8 year olds that the presents under the tree were put there by their parents, not Santa. 

As expected those present planting parents were outraged at the teacher at the George W. Miller Elementary School teacher in Nanuet, NY.  At first, so was I.  If some teacher decided to take away one of my children’s fondest memories of youth, I would want to tie them to Santa’s sleigh and drag them around at the North Pole until they were convinced it is more than some lore.  

As I considered the actions of the teacher my outrage turned to sadness.  What in this person’s life allowed them to be so disillusioned, that they felt it was their responsibility to enlighten children in such a way. 

It is no wonder in this 24 hour bad news cycle,  the age of political correctness gone awry, and reality TV (that I hope has no real correlation to reality in most homes) that we become lost in what truly matters.  The sadness prompted me to look up an old article published in the New York Sun in 1897, titled Yes,Virginia, There is a Santa Clause.  It cheered me up. 

I decided to post it here in hopes it does the same for you. Perhaps it will not only brings you back to a simpler time, but help create that time for now.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

By Francis P. Church, first published in The New York Sun in 1897. [See The People’s Almanac, pp. 1358–9.]

We take pleasure in answering 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

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 you 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, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, 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 lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.