Is There Really a Santa Claus? A Response to Virginia's Letter in 1897

[Ivan Seeking]

I figured it out around age five or six, I think. Being that our family is full of pranksters, to me it all seemed like just another practical joke. I remember being a bit bummed, but the logic of it all had bothered me anyway.

It has been shown time and again that having a fantasy life is healthy for kids. Are a few years of magic worth the reality check? I think so. Life is full of disappointments. Perhaps the Santa disillusionment is good training.

Why rob a child of the few years of joy and wonder that Christmas magic can bring.

 

[turbo]

I figured it out around age five or six, I think. Being that our family is full of pranksters, to me it all seemed like just another practical joke. I remember being a bit bummed, but the logic of it all had bothered me anyway.

It has been shown time and again that having a fantasy life is healthy for kids. Are a few years of magic worth the reality check? I think so. Life is full of disappointments. Perhaps the Santa disillusionment is good training.

I remember being quietly self-satisfied to have figured it out, and really bummed to realize that many of my best friends had no real chance of getting much for Christmas apart from some really inexpensive do-dads (if that) and maybe some socks or underwear, because their parents were too poor. This was the '50s, and we didn't have garage sales, lawn sales, etc - just networks of friends and family who would hand down clothing, shoes, etc that their kid(s) had outgrown.

I had a couple of older cousins in West Hartford (thank god they were boys!) whose mother would never bother to repair clothing. My great-uncle ran a towing and car-repair business and they were quite well-off. The boys were just a bit older than me, and when the family got together back in Maine around Thanksgiving, their mother often gave my mother nice department-store kids' clothing with minor rips, missing buttons, etc. Mom was a great seamstress, and she could take apart a slightly oversized shirt, and tailor it to fit me. We did OK. Feeding a family of 6 on about minimum wage and all the overtime he could take... I still try to take care of my father because I know how tough it must have been.

 

[physics girl phd]

I remember sleeping right next to the tree (we were all in Florida to visit my grandparents for the holidays) and rolling over onto my sister's pogo stick... and waking to tell Grandma (making tea in the kitchen, probably after helping my parents sneak the gifts in) that Santa had come. I was probably under age five.

I don't remember when I stopped believing, but I do remember buying my sister a stuffed bear at the school holiday fair (like a book fair), and showing it to her when I got home (but shh... act surprised at Christmas!) Of course when the bear was unwrapped, she and my brother got in a tussle and the bear's head popped off. Another holiday at my grandparents... so thank goodness Grandma was there to sew it back on.

 

[Redbelly98]

I was 8, and started having doubts until I just asked my Mom point-blank if there was really a Santa Claus. She seized the opportunity to tell me the truth without hurting me, and simply told me "no".

Soon after that, I posed the same question to her about God. I couldn't believe the difference in her answer, and in how upset she got over my asking it.

 

[turbo]

I was 8, and started having doubts until I just asked my Mom point-blank if there was really a Santa Claus. She seized the opportunity to tell me the truth without hurting me, and simply told me "no".

Soon after that, I posed the same question to her about God. I couldn't believe the difference in her answer, and in how upset she got over my asking it.

I had that one figured out, too, RB. I was probably at least 12-13 years old until she relented and let me stop attending Sunday-school. My mother was French-Catholic and my father was not of the faith, and they both had to promise to raise me in the faith. It took a lot of NO!s to get my way.

The logical refutation for me came when discussing people who would be relegated to Limbo. What could a child who was born too soon have done to deserve that? I knew that my church's version of god was as empty as Santa Claus very young. Disbelief was not welcome in some quarters. God could not have left my friends as impoverished as Santa, when they had parents who were very nice and worked hard... except that god always seemed to let them down.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Sept, 1897

"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 [NEW YORK] 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 [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.

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.

http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/