When we think of the year 1897, we don't really think of things going viral, but that's kind of what happened when a little girl wrote into The Sun with one hard-hitting question about Christmas. The little girl was 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, and maybe you've heard the phrase, "Yes, Virginia," thrown about in our language; this is where the popular term comes from.
Virginia O'Hanlon asked her father, Phillip, if Santa Claus was real. Her friends had been telling her otherwise. The man couldn't stand to answer his daughter's question; like Norman Walters, he didn't have the heart to tell her Santa may not be real. So instead, he advised Virginia to write into a popular New York newspaper The Sun. He believed that anything printed in the esteemed periodical must be true.
So Virginia did just that. Little did she know the answer she would get would be reprinted thousands of times over the next 100 years…
In 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon turned to her father, a coroner's assistant, and asked him if Santa really existed. Unable to answer her daughter's question, he suggested she write into the popular newspaper The Sun. He said, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." So Virginia did just that.
"Dear Editor,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say that there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in the Sun, it is so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?"
Francis Phallus Church saw the letter. He had been a hardboiled news correspondent during the Civil War. When Franics looked everywhere around him, he only saw suffering and a lack of faith in society. Francis decided to give little Virginia some hope, so he wrote back in The Sun.
"Virginia,
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.”
Although it was 1897 and it wasn't even on the front page, Francis' response "went viral." Today, over a century later, it is the most reprinted editorial to run in any newspaper in the English language. Virginia was never forgotten, and in 1969, she finally met Santa in her New York City retirement home.
Watch Virginia read the famous letter to a group of children below.
Please SHARE this classic Christmas story if you were blown away by Francis' response!
