"Yes, Virginia" -- One Hundred Years of Santa Claus

By Rick Horowitz

She was a girl with a problem. He was a man with a job to do. Together, they produced a legend: perhaps the most famous piece of writing ever to appear in an American newspaper.

And it happened exactly 100 years ago today -- out of season, and out of nowhere. Are you up for a little time travel? Good! Grab your holiday hat and hold on tight.

Our tale begins in New York City, where in 1897 one Dr. Philip P. O'Hanlon, coroner's assistant, came face-to-face with a minor family crisis. It seems that O'Hanlon's daughter -- his only child -- had approached him in some confusion; she'd been talking to her friends, and what she'd heard from these friends worried her. Could her father help her out?

Her father, of course, did what any father would do under the circumstances, what fathers have done for generations: He passed the buck.Instead of answering her question himself, he suggested she write a letter to one of the local newspapers -- to The Sun. (After all, that's what he often did when he had a question.) The Sun would have an answer she could rely on, he told his daughter.

"If you see it in The Sun," he liked to say, "it's so."

So that's what she did: Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon sent her letter off to the newspaper.

Now, working at The Sun at that moment was a certain Francis Pharcellus Church. Once upon The New York Times, Church had been a Civil War correspondent; he'd also served as editor of The Army and Navy Journal and of the literary magazine Galaxy. In the fall of 1897, Francis Church was an editorial writer, commenting deftly, if anonymously, on a whole range of issues. (Not often on politics, though -- the man just didn't care for politics.)

When Church's boss handed him Virginia O'Hanlon's letter and suggested he draft a reply for the editorial page, Church was less than thrilled. In fact, his boss later reported, he "bristled." He "pooh-poohed." It's hard to blame him: After all, journalists have far better things to do with their time (or so they say) than responding to letters from eight-year-olds.

But he did it anyway; that was his job.

His response, written quickly, was no big deal. In fact, on the day it appeared in The Sun, it was the seventh(!) editorial on the page. It ran below editorials on New York State politics and New York City politics and even Connecticut politics. It ran below an editorial about increased British naval strength in the Atlantic. Below an editorial about plans for a railroad to help link eastern Canada with the newly discovered gold fields of the Yukon.

It even ran below an editorial about a newfangled "chainless" bicycle that would soon be available. ("(W)heelmen and wheelwomen," the writer declared, "have been impatient to know all about the new machine.")

Church's editorial ran below all of those. But it ran -- on September 21, 1897. And for its title, it used Virginia O'Hanlon's own question: "Is There a Santa Claus?"

You may have seen the thing once or twice.

You're not alone. Virginia's question, and Church's reply, struck a chord. A major chord.

"Yes, Virginia," Church assured the little girl, "there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."

"Nobody sees Santa Claus," Church admitted a few lines later, "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."

And he ended this way: "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."

People were delighted at the news, at Church's little celebration of faith over skepticism. They wanted to read it again. And again. The Sun obliged them, reprinting the piece year after year (somewhat closer to December 25th, presumably) until the paper went out of business a half-century later. Other papers did the same even after The Sun went down.

For a century now, readers have loved what Church created -- but no more than journalists do. They're ecstatic that they don't have to crank out another Christmas essay of their own every year; they can just slap Francis Church and his "Yes, Virginia" up there on the page and go straight to the office party.

Of course, maybe they should take a crack at it anyway. Sure, it's been done to death, but you never know. You never know which of your efforts is going to touch someone, which of your thrown-together phrases might be headed for immortality.

Francis Pharcellus Church wasn't crazy about his assignment either. He didn't do too badly.

9/21/97