Traditions help make the Christmas season joyful!
What would life be like without traditions? Particularly at Christmas? On September 21, 1897, Francis P. Church, an editor at The New York Sun, wrote a letter to a young lady who wondered about on particular tradition of the season. Church’s classic response to Virginia – “yes Virginia” – provides soothing words to a sometimes cynical world!
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, 115 West Ninety-fifth Street.
“Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical 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 child-like 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. . . . 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, 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.
The songs we sing. The movies we watch yet another year. The visits to relatives. The same meals we’ve eaten for as long as we can remember. The candlelight church service. Traditions. Oh, they can drive us a bit crazy and might even feel a little bit boring at times. But they do point to the “unseeable” and help us experience anew the “supernal beauty and glory beyond.” Traditions are one of the sweetest blessings of Christmas.
From the Simple Blessings of Christmas by Mark Gilroy
