If you’re counting down to Christmas 2023, it’s less than a week away!  

Are you ready?

I’m not. And so, I’m repeating a post from Christmas 2022. This one covers the true magic of Christmas:

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

There are gifts to wrap, cookies to bake, and errands to run to try to make some Christmas magic for the two people in my life who still have stars in their eyes when Santa’s name comes up.

They don’t doubt, and we shouldn’t either! I’m sharing the letter written over one hundred years ago by an editor at The Sun, answering the question of a little girl whose friends were planting doubts:

Please tell the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

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 Clause. 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 Clause! 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 Clause coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Clause. 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 this 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 hearts of childhood.

If you’re celebrating the holiday, have a wonderful Christmas!