Is there a Santa?
21st December 2018
Christmas time very often is lined with stress. Increased workload in your job, buying presents and wrapping them, decorating the house and Christmas tree, juggling family and friends, planning a special Christmas menu to everyone`s gusto and preparing it, etc.
Sounds stressful ?!
I agree.
However, as always in life no one can make us do or feel anything, it is all our choice.
Do we play along Christmas madness, or do we choose to enjoy the festive season?
This magical time of the year when candle light brightens our homes, filled with gorgeous smells. When families and friends come together to celebrate and everyone is a bit more cheerful, hopeful, happier. A time when we allow ourselves to daydream more and fairy tales seem a bit more real. And fairy tales are a great way to relax and destress. Take some time between the years and read a fairy tale again; or get together with your loved ones and ask them to have a short story or fairy tale to tell. Everyone will love it. Even the Grinch got second thoughts about Christmas:
“Maybe Christmas”, the Grinch thought, “does not come from a store." The Grinch by Theodor Seuss Geisel
The following little true story helps us grasp the bigger picture of Christmas spirit and opens our hearts. So, just enjoy it.
121 years ago a little girl, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon, like the Grinch, became doubtful herself regarding Christmas; and so she wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun. This was so important to the editor that he entrusted veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church with the answer – for the front page of the Sun. The Newspaper responded quickly and printed the answer as an editorial on 21st September 1897.
For more than half a century the Sun reprinted this correspondence between Virginia O’Hanlon and Francis P. Church every year at Christmas time – until the newspaper was shut down in 1950. The correspondence has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial.
Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus
The New York Sun – September 21, 1897
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author, Francis P. Church, is numbered among the friends of 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 West Ninety-Fifth Street
New York”
That’s what Francis P. Church answered little Virginia:
“Dear 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 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 childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external 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, 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 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.
Merry Christmas, Virginia.
Yours sincerely,
Francis Church”
Allow Christmas Time to awaken your inner child again; allow yourself to just enjoy this mystical time of the year to the full, relax, do some daydreaming and just be well.
I wish you a magical Christmas and a wonderful New Year filled with happiness and health – and always hold on to your dreams.
Until next time be happy, be balanced and be well,
Sibylle
The Inner Works
sibylle chaudhuri | coaching & training
email: info@sibylle-chaudhuri.com
www.sibylle-chaudhuri.com
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