Perhaps some childlike hope in this cold and frightening Holiday.

(A little background. My wife...consider herself "new thinking" religious. She has friends who are Jewish, pagan, Christian, Non-christian, Athists... One thing my wife does is that this WHOLE holiday season she gets into this mood that I never see other times of year. I will however say this year she doesn't have the spirit she normally has had in the past. But regardless of what personal beliefs her friends are she embodies the holiday and how THEY celebrate it. She knows how and when they do their celebrations and when she is with them she in a sense embodies their belief . It is kind of hard to explain and it is something to be seen.)

Anyways my wife did her usual reading of Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus. for her friends little kids.

My wife adds something at the end of the reading every year:

And Santa lives inside of each and every one of us. When we share a drink with one another, help one another, respect one another. He is there when you help a stranger as well as giving your friends a gift and he is here -more present this year than years before because we need his spirit. When you help people who are starving and in need and you give to those people. He is there when a stranger lends a helping hand to help someone with a flat tire or a bad engine.

The 12 year old "Goth" Kid started laughing at my wife. "You seriously believe that". (Goth has been going Thur a stage lately... only seeing the worst hopelessness and just been so depress that she has not joined in any of her families festivities. She has been nothing but rude to her younger siblings and just a pain in the neck.

"Oh, yes, I do. He has been adopted in one form around the world and it is the basic idea that basic heart that regardless of class, wealth, race and background we need hope and kindness and he is the embodiment of and lives inside each and every one of us that needs to come out in order for our own humanity to survive. The material aspects can be cleared away and for the most part for a lot of families it has happened this year but yet carols are sung. People are still helping one another, the world is being decorated to bring some sort of joy and I gladly with my last breath defend and promote that feeling. I have always tried to keep that feeling in my heart all year but if I don't renew it and allow it out the most this time of year I would not be the person I am. "

My wife went on to read to the kids some stories and watching movies with them. (Kids look at my wife as if she is a big kid and though she goes to visit the parents 9 times out of 10 the kids end up steeling half of the attention. So the parents talk in the kitchen and kind of keep my wife in the loop of the conversation as much as possible.

Anyways Goth with tears in her eyes went to her mother and whispered that she wanted to help her mother at the food bank tomorrow.


"Dear Editor--I am eight 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 Street


Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical 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 child-like 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 you 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 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.

(Side note-- This may not mean shit to people here but I thought I'd tell it.)