It has been called the most widely read letter ever published in a newspaper. It has spawned an illustrated children’s book, an animated TV special, a musical, a cantata, advertising campaigns, charity campaigns, and an annual reading of the letter and its response at Columbia University.
On Sept. 21, 1897, The New York Sun published a Christmas-themed letter from 8-year-old Manhattan resident Virginia O’Hanlon. The letter and the reply from Sun editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church have come to collectively be known as “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” and they have seized an indelible place in American lore. As we pay homage to Christmas Day and to the magic that surrounds it, here is the text of that exchange as it originally appeared in 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 W. 95th St.
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 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.
