Sunday, November 21, 2010

Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!

"Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and you know what?  There are angels too". 

If you would have asked me this time last year if I believed in angels, I would have laughed in your face.  I would have told you that I believe only as far as the old television show called "Touch by an Angel."  The show starred Roma Downey, Della Reese, and John Dye, who played Monica, Tess, and Andrew. 

Now, if you were to ask me today, right now, if I believe in angels, well, my answer would not include laughing or a television show.  Instead, it would include a few stories from the heart and maybe a few tears.  My answer would be greatly different this year.  For Brian and I now have an angel of our very own.  We have witnessed "signs" from our angel that can not and will not ever be explained. 

Below is the exact letter that Virginia wrote to the editor of The New York Sun in 1897.  Please read this letter as it pertains to my entire life right now:

"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."


VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] 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 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 may 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.

And there you have it... My life summed up in The Sun, so it must be true.  I fully agree with the editor’s analogy of man to an ant.  I just provided a similar statement to Brian the other day.  I said, "Have you ever thought about how we are really nothing in the grand scheme of things?  We are merely ants in the world, we have our own little colonies and we just continue to push through.  But really, there is so very much more to life.  It is so much bigger than we really know, so much, that one person will never understand all of it before they leave it." 

Oh, this editor is so correct when he says "The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see."   One has no idea what life is about until they experience and believe in the unknown, the unseeable.  Believing in the unseeable is something that needs to occur in every one's life, but there are many out there who try to stop that from happening.  But not in my life, now that I know and have seen I will never stop believing.  Wyatt taught me not to allow others to cause disbelief.  And yes, just like the editor said, it is the unseeable that is the most real thing in the world. 

So, if you asked me today if I believe in angels, my response would be one similar to that of the response from the editor of The Sun.  It would be a response that many may challenge but only those who BELIEVE will ever understand.