Every year during Yuletide, I try to include the infamous Letter to Santa from then eight-year-old Virginia who once wrote to the editor of The Sun, asking the age-old question, “Is there a Santa Claus?”
This year our youngest is 10 about to turn 11. The kids don’t wake up seeking the mischievous elf and his antics of moving overnight.
The youngest and I have reached a standoff on discussing the subject. Picture a dusty abandoned road straight out of a western. Colin on side donning a wide brimmed hat shielding his eyes as he squints at me in the distance with his hand hovering a few inches above his revolver strapped to his hip.
I take my stance long down the dirt road. Carefully glancing at porches and store fronts. Afterall no need for colleterial damage in this showdown.
His eyes beg to ask me, “Mama, is there a Santa Claus?”
They ask, but he never utters words. He knows I’m holding on to every vestige of his childhood innocence.
So, we stumble through one more year being able to say, “We never talked about it.” Our own little version of Schrödinger's Cat.
Now while I could never explain my reasoning as eloquently as the editor of The Sun, I agree with him whole heartedly and why it is a tradition to reprint his answer in the paper every Christmas edition.
But I also was able to witness Santa at work in Tate County last Thursday night.
After a week of typing Letters to Santa, I joined Senatobia Police Department, Tate County Sheriff’s Office, Coldwater Police Department, Senatobia Fire & Rescue and Northwest Mississippi Community College Police and watched as they brought Santa to life to bring joy to over 40 of Tate County’s children during the Shop with a Cop event.
If their generous gift of time and patience and the abundant financial donations from local businesses and residents doesn’t embody the magical and wonderful ideal of Santa, then I simply don’t know what will.
It was a tremendous blessing for me to be able to follow the children around and capture their joy and delight on camera.
As for me? Yes. I believe in Santa Claus and he’s right here in Tate County.
“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.”
Merry Christmas, Friends! May your holiday be blessed this year!
The following is a reprinting of The Sun’s “Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus.”
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.
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 our 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.
