It was way back in 1897 when Virginia Hanlon sent a letter to the editor of the New York Sun. “Dear Editor,” she wrote, “I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. … Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?” In six brief paragraphs, the unnamed editor provided an answer that resonates today.
“Virginia, your little friends are wrong,” he writes. “They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.”
Imagine what that editor would think of 2018. The very concept of metaphysical reality has fallen under siege. Technology has pulled our gaze downward—to smartphone screens, to tangible matter, and to our ability to mold it without regard for a transcendent or even natural order. The He Jiankui gene editing scandal is the latest example of how we can treat conception and gestation as mere chemical processes that can be contracted, altered, manipulated, and destroyed.
What does this have to do with Virginia and her letter? Well, a world that is suspicious of what it cannot see and control can only have a Christmas that is bland, superficial, and untrue.
As our Editor reminds Virginia, skepticism and pride blind us to an important truth: “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.” Our smallness is not a bad thing. The belief that we can understand and control every aspect of life sounds empowering, but it can also feed into despair.
The potential of something beyond what our senses detect and regulate allows the Editor to affirm, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Now, in order to defend his answer (which at first glance seems like an innocent lie meant to console an innocent child), we must understand exactly what “Santa Claus” means. As the Editor implies, the character should not be strictly defined as an old man who comes down the chimney with gifts. “You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus,” he asserts, “but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?”
No, the essence of Santa Claus is the virtue he embodies and encourages: “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist,” explains the Editor.
But why can’t we just say that those things—love and generosity and devotion—exist, and forget the childhood fantasies? Because fantasy fosters and adorns the virtues it presents. As Carmen C. Richardson puts it in “The Reality of Fantasy,” a fairy tale “requires readers to look beyond the apparent, to strip a situation to its core, and to find the essentials.” It makes the good believable and desirable. Just as the tender helplessness of a baby makes it easier for us to love God and each other, a fairy tale like Santa Claus can make it easier to embrace the spirit of Christmas. Without the wonder that fairy tales encourage, we would have no appreciation for the mysterious or the unknown. “There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence,” writes the Editor. We cannot explain why certain words sound so pleasant when strung together in a poem, why a particular person falls in love with one and not another, or why hearing the phrase “You’ll never know how much I love you” fills us with such awe and joy. Why should we seek a “logical explanation” for these things? It is enough to bask in their incomprehensible loveliness.
For this reason, in a certain sense adults need the spirit of Santa Claus as much as children do. The wonderment of childhood trains our minds and hearts to believe in realities we cannot verify physically or scientifically. Then, when the literal meaning of the tale dissolves—as it must and should—the symbolism remains, and we can attach that same wonder to things that are all the more fantastic but all the more real. Just because we cannot see the edge of the universe, the human soul, angels, or God, does that mean they don’t exist? Just because it is absurd to think that God would become a defenseless infant, is that any reason to deny it? Our world needs wonder.
If we hold onto that essence of Santa Claus, then we honestly can say with the Editor that he does exist, no matter how old we get. Perhaps we find him in the selfless affection of a spouse, in the sacrificial love of parents, or in the kind gesture of a friend. We need to remember the wonder from our childhood dreams. With it, we can “push aside that curtain [covering the unseen world] and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond.” And if ever, like Virginia, we have a doubt and ask, “Is it all real?” we can return to the reassuring reply, “Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.”
