“Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus”

Story Background

by Patricia P Goodin

In the early 1950s, the young soldiers of World War II had become young fathers; their children were to become known as the post-war baby boomers. It appeared that American children were safe, protected within the realm of freedom to enjoy the follies of youth and the promise of tomorrow. But beneath the veil of protection lurked an ominous predator quietly overpowering the unsuspecting and preying upon young victims. The predator was a disease called poliomyelitis, commonly known as polio. The name alone washed a wave of panic over parents. Ask a baby boomer today about polio and the inevitable recollection surfaces: “Yes, I remember polio. There was a boy in my class who had polio. He had a brace on his leg,” or, “Yeah. I remember standing in line to get the sugar cube with the vaccine - at my school.”

Polio Warnings

In her book, Patenting The Sun, author Jane S. Smith notes common responses from adult members of the post-war generation:

Just today, I was bending over to take a drink from a fountain. The water wouldn’t go up, there was just a trickle over the spout, and I hear my mother’s voice saying, ‘Don’t drink that — you’ll get polio.’ It was just a flash from my childhood.

When I was growing up in Wisconsin, in Oshkosh, my mother would never let me go to the State Fair. I always wanted to go, but she’d say, ‘Do you want to get polio and spend the rest of your life in an iron lung?’ What a terrifying thing that was — the iron lung.

The warnings were commonplace: avoid summer crowds and swimming pools. Today, adults over the age of 60 may recall a classmate who wore a brace on a leg or arm. Some might remember the haunting image and sounds of the foreboding iron lung. Polio was a disease so feared by the American public, Smith suggests, that when it was finally eradicated in the United States in the 1960s—it also vanished from the American consciousness. It was as if anything connected to polio had been put in a box and the lid sealed shut.

1952: The Peak of Polio

The year 1952 marked an unprecedented number of polio cases in the United States. More that 57,600 individuals were stricken with polio and 3,000 died from the crippling disease. At the time, young polio survivors who faced months or years of therapy were sent to specially equipped hospitals and rehabilitation centers for their recovery. Public schools were not designed to accommodate students in wheelchairs, and stairs rendered the use of walking sticks difficult.

Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas

During the early 1950s, New York City Public Schools in Brooklyn held classes in 12 hospitals and institutions for chronically ill, blind and crippled children. A veteran teacher, Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas, a petite silver-haired woman with a MA from Columbia and a PhD from Fordham, served as junior principal at such a school.

In numerous interviews over the years, many newspapers reported that Virginia, the only daughter of a New York physician, had always chosen to teach in the city’s poorest neighborhood schools in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Harlem and Brooklyn before teaching at the hospital school, P.S. 401. What motivated her to teach in a hospital is a question only she could answer, but it is a question writers and reporters will always ask. For it was this same Virginia who, as a young girl, inspired the most famous editorial in the history of journalism: “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus.”

“Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus”

The famed editorial commentary was written in New York City in 1897 by Francis P. Church, an editor at The Sun newspaper, in response to a letter from then 8-year-old Virginia asking, “Is there a Santa Claus?”

Initially, Church had no interest in crafting the paper’s response to the child’s letter. Coaxed on by a colleague, Church finally agreed.[1] His reply became the most widely reprinted editorial in newspaper history and holds that unique distinction to this day. His immortal words validating acts of love, devotion and generosity captured the heart of the public and solidified the persona of Santa Claus in American culture.

As the editorial grew in popularity in the early 1900s, Virginia’s name became a household word. “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus” enjoyed national and international fame during the early 20th century as the editorial was published each holiday season in newspapers across the country and translated into more than 20 languages around the world.

In 1934 Jared L. Manley wrote in The New Yorker:

It appears in a dozen anthologies, along with Eugene Field’s ‘Little Boy Blue’ and Lincoln’s letter to Mrs. Bixby. Two years ago Henry Ford, after displaying his latest V-8 to newspapermen in Dearborn, sought out the Sun man and showed him a clipping of the editorial, which he always carries in his wallet.

Francis P. Church was born in Rochester, New York, on February 22, 1839. One of three brothers, he was the grandson of Willard Church, a soldier in the Revolutionary War and a lineal descendant of Roger Conant, Governor of the Massachusetts Colony. Church graduated with honors from Columbia University in 1859. Though he authored the famed reply to Virginia’s question, the editorial was not credited to him with a byline, as is customary among newspapers. It was not until April 12, 1906, the day after Church’s death, that The Sun published the following commentary:

At this time, with the sense of personal loss strong upon us, we know of no better or briefer way to make the friends of The Sun feel that they too have lost a friend than to violate custom by indicating him as the author of the beautiful and often republished editorial article affirming the existence of Santa Claus, in reply to the question of a little girl.

In numerous interviews throughout her life Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas was often quoted expressing her concern for children, using her celebrity as a vehicle to raise awareness of children’s issues. In 1935 an article in the December 22 issue of The New York Times quoted her saying, “There is more need today for people realizing practically what Santa Claus may mean to children than ever, because children today—their childhood is filled with so many difficult realities. They need the joys of childhood not only as an illusion but as an actual fact.”

On June 12, 1959, an article in The New York Times details her relationships with former students as a life-long experience:

She meets many of them as she goes about her work. A police car will draw up to the curb and the patrolman will lean out to call her by name and remind her that she was his teacher. A taxi driver will turn about in his seat and say, ‘I’m Harold from P.S. 31. Why, I used to think you were greater than the President.’

Virginia O’Hanlon was 8 years old when she wrote her letter to the newspaper. Francis P. Church was 58 when he wrote the now famous reply. They lived their lives, for the most part, in two different centuries. Their lives become intertwined forever when a little girl’s belief in the existence of Santa Claus inspired a man, who had no children of his own, to write an editorial sanctioning the dreams and hopes of all children—destined to leave its indelible mark on millions of readers for generations to come.

Virginia retired in 1959, after serving 43 years as a teacher and junior principal. Her decision to become a teacher and her choice of where she taught reflect the compassion and values expressed in the editorial. Virginia not only inspired its message of love, generosity and devotion—it seems she lived it as well. The Santa Claus Girl is her story.

[1] Mitchel, Edward P. Memoirs Of An Editor. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924.

The Editorial

The editorial, as published in The Sun, September 21, 1897:

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author 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 95th Street

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 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 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 they 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 so 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.