Yes, Santa Claus... by Andrea Lena DiMaggio

To:
Justin Winter, Editor-in-Chief
Elfin Gazette
136 Thankful Ave. North Pole, Arctic Circle

From:
Santa Claus, President & C.E.O. ClausInc.
115 Grateful Way, North Pole, Arctic Circle
December 1, 2010

Dear Jay,

As you know, my dear old friend, I am an eternity old. Some of your co-workers say there is no Virginia. Mrs. Claus says, 'If you see it in The Gazette, it's so.'

From my records, I only know that the child in question is named Virgil O’Hanlon of Bayonne, New Jersey. Please tell me the truth; is there a Virginia?

Best Regards,

Santo De Nicolo (Santa)

Memo:

To:
Santa Claus, President & C.E.O. ClausInc.
115 Grateful Way, North Pole, Arctic Circle

From:
Jay Winter, Editor-in-Chief
Elfin Gazette,
136 Thankful Ave. North Pole, Arctic Circle
December 4, 2010

RE: Your memo dated 12-1-2010

My Dear Santa,

My co-workers are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they have chosen to believe. They think that nothing can be true which they do not absorb and comprehend. All minds, as you are aware, Santa, can be narrow and uninformed. In this great world of ours we can be small, stuck in our own intellect, as compared with the boundless world about us, as evidenced by hearts that choose to see the vast scope of the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Santa Clause, there is a Virginia. She exists as certainly as her love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to others life in its highest beauty and joy. How sad? How utterly sad would be the world if there were no Virginia. It would be as heartbreaking if you yourself did not exist. Without Virginia, there would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance in the lives of those she touches to make tolerable their existence. They would have no enjoyment, except in mere sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be snuffed out.

Not believe in Virginia? You might as well not believe in anything! You might get your friends to look out in every clinic in every town, but even if they did not see the woman in the young man or the girl in the sad boy? What would that prove? Her own father fails to see her, but that is no sign that there is no Virginia. The most real things in the world are those that some might not see. Did you ever see the fairness in her heart or the tenderness of her soul? 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 may tear away her clothes and see what makes her seem unreal on the outside to the misinformed, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the most learned man or woman, nor even the united morality of all the moral people that ever lived, could disprove. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and envision the supernal beauty and glory within this beautiful child. Is it all real? Ah, Santa, in all this world there is nothing else more real and abiding.

No Virginia? Thank God! She lives, and she lives forever…in the hearts of her friends and her family who see her as she is, even if she lives only in their hearts though they only see their son or their brother or their friend dwell in their midst… for now. Even if she has not the strength as yet to be herself, those who care may pray for that strength to come. Years from now, she will continue to make glad the heart of sisterhood. And someday she will be real in every way. Yes, Santa, there is a Virginia. Best Regards, Jay