More than a century ago — when trust between citizens and the media was not so strained — an 8-year-old girl named Virginia O’Hanlon in New York City wrote a letter to the editor.
“Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus,” the youngster wrote to the New York Sun in 1897. “Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?”
The child’s letter, and the unsigned response from editorial writer Francis Church, have become nearly as famous as the jolly old himself. It has spawned movies, books, music, stage plays and more.
The famous response from the Columbia University graduate, published on Page 6 of the Sun on Sept. 21, 1897, is perhaps the best-known, most re-printed editorial in American journalism history.
Church covered the Civil War as a journalist and his normal editorial style was as hard, biting and cynical as one might expect from someone who had witnessed the horror of that conflict.
Perhaps something in the child’s letter touched Church’s heart. Perhaps at age 58, Church had gotten past the painful war memories three decades earlier. Perhaps he just saw the opportunity to make an innocent child smile.
For whatever the reason, the Sun editorial was philosophical, warm and reassuring for children and adults, alike.
Church began with a refutation of O’Hanlon’s friends.
“Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what 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.”
He then made it clear the legendary St. Nicholas did exist.
“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 external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.”
Church didn’t stop there. He made it clear to O’Hanlon that things do not have to always be seen to be believed.
“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.”
Church then referenced the value of art in considering 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.”
Church then closed with a fiery exhortation to hammer home his editorial point.
“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.”
Despite his poignant response, Church never took public credit for the the editorial. It wasn’t widely known until after he died in 1906 that Church had penned the opinion piece.
The editorial had its desired impact. O’Hanlon, her faith restored, grew up and graduated from Hunter College with a bachelor of arts degree in 1910. She earned a master’s degree in education from Church’s alma mater in 1911 and a doctorate in the same discipline from Fordham University.
For decades, O’Hanlon was a school teacher, principal and activist for children’s rights in New York City. Questioned years later, O’Hanlon confirmed she still believed in Santa Claus. She died at age 81 in 1971.
The home in Manhattan where O’Hanlon was raised is now home to the Studio School, for students in pre-school through eighth grade, where her legacy is still celebrated today.
