I BELIEVE

This was originally published by the Marblehead Reporter in 2013, but it remains my favorite piece. Whatever you celebrate, at the core of it all should be a belief in magic, in childhood, in what is unseen, but no less real than that which we can see, touch and hear.

 “Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.”
— Francis Pharcellus Church

Is there a Santa Claus? That is the question 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asked the editor of a prominent New York City paper, The Sun, in September 1897. It’s the question every child asks at some point. Parents wrestle with the answer, as I’m sure Mr. Church did as well. Is Santa real?

Well, for one thing, let’s be clear. This isn’t a discussion about the existence of a fat guy in a red suit who knows when you are sleeping and knows when you’re awake. Seriously, lists of kids who are bad and kids who are good? That’s a little creepy. This is not an analysis of whether or not someone could magically go all over the world in one night, stopping only at homes that celebrate Christmas and carrying enough gifts for everyone via a sled pulled by flying moose. OK, they aren’t moose, they’re reindeer. Whatever. Others can debate the physics of that. That is not what Virginia was asking about.

After asking her father, Virginia went on to ask the editor of newspaper this very important question. Can you imagine a kid today doing that? We have the Internet now, but that’s not the point. She didn’t ask a teacher or a pastor. She first asked her dad, and when he suggested asking the editor of The Sun, she took his advice and wrote a letter. Say what you will about the advantages technology has brought, there is something lost when you consider that the average 8 year-old today would not write a letter and most likely would not know the name of a major city newspaper. Today it would be a Google search.

The editor of The Sun, Francis Pharcellus Church, was childless and had been a battlefield correspondent during the Civil War. He had seen death and destruction up close; if anyone had reason to be cynical, he did. Instead of ignoring the letter, he chose to address it in what has become the most frequently reprinted editorial in history. He told Virginia, “No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

Well, here it is 116 (in 2018, 121) years later. The legend of Santa Claus continues, but not as it was then. Time, the media and the advertising business have turned it into something Francis Church could never have imagined. The image most of us know of a large man in a red-and-white suit started well before Virginia’s letter in 1823 with Clement C. Moore, who gave us the reindeer and the chimney in his poem, “A Visit From Saint Nicholas.” In 1886, political cartoonist Thomas Nast, in a series of drawings for Harper’s Weekly, added the North Pole, the workshop and the somewhat scary list of naughty and nice. Norman Rockwell featured a red-and-white-clad Santa checking a list in an illustration from 1921. In the 1940s, Coca-Cola included a Santa image in its advertising that has since become the standard. However, none of that answers the question children ask every year, “Is Santa real?”

That question strikes at the very heart of the concept of believing in something that can’t be proven to exist. Clearly millions of people in the world do; otherwise there would be no churches, no temples, no spirituality. So much would be lost if there weren’t people of all faiths who held in their hearts the belief that things can be more than what they seem on the surface. That is something that anyone, even outside of organized religion, can choose to believe without ever having to participate in the Santa Claus legend. The world is a better place because of those who allow for the possibility that there can be this kind of magic in our lives regardless of where our beliefs fall.

Some years ago, there was a chimney sweep who was well known around town. He was good at what he did; he was a family man and a dear friend to so many. Brownie carried Santa hats in his truck, and whenever he worked in a home with children (after clearing it with the parents of course), he would grab one of the hats and drop it down the chimney from the top. Then when he was working on the fireplace and opened the damper, it would fall out. He would show it to the kids and say, “Look what was in your chimney. Santa must have dropped it. You should leave it out for him. It’s cold in that sleigh, and he needs it.”

Brownie believed in Santa Claus, fully and without reservation. Perhaps some people might think that’s weird or over the top, but that’s not what it was about for Brownie. He believed in bringing just a little magic into the world, and that is how he chose to do it. Brownie died, believe it or not, on a cold Christmas Eve, surrounded by his family. There was not enough magic or medical science to keep cancer away from him. Those that knew him miss him every day, but they believe because Brownie showed them what it could be about. Not the stores or the presents or all the hype, but the magic of being a kid at any age.

Francis P. Church believed as well. When asked by someone barely old enough to read his paper instead of ignoring the question, he chose to offer hope in that which could not be seen, and faith in that which could not be touched. He wrote, “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.”

Good answer. I believe.

Brenda Kelley Kim is a Marblehead resident.