This question is often asked by people from across the world from all ages.
When someone asks if Santa is real at Hobbyco we love to refer them to the correspondence between the 8 year-old Virginia O’Hanlon and the editor of New York’s Sun Francis Pharcellus Church on September 21st 1897. Virginia wrote a letter asking if Santa was real and the response from Francis was incredible!
This article may be old but the message is still true to this day. Yes Santa is real! This newspaper editorial is the most reprinted article in the world ever even to this day, appearing in dozens of languages, books, movies, other editorials and much more.
Here is the article.
“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 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.
#SeriouslyFunFacts
When VIRGINIA O’HANLON grew up she majored in Education receiving her doctorate in 1930.
Church was a war correspondent during the American Civil War, a time that saw great suffering and a corresponding lack of hope and faith in much of society.
Church was a hardened cynic and an atheist who had little patience for superstitious beliefs, he did not want to write the editorial, and refused to allow his name to be attached to the piece.
A commemorative plaque celebrating O'Hanlon and her letter was added to the building, now a school, where Virginia O'Hanlon lived when the letter was written. The plaque was dedicated at a ceremony attended by three generations of O'Hanlon's family (Source).
