I was thinking about the many Christmases I spent in the newsroom.

A collection of like-minded journalists doesn’t need any help figuring out how to make the holidays brighter. There were Christmas Eve margaritas (before we clocked out for the day — not on site, mind you), Bobo the Clown pranks, and Christmas decorating contests between departments — fairly cutthroat when you pit newsroom against advertising.

I also remember, as editor, praying that we’d have a wonderful Christmas headline. The worst thing was having to put horrific news on the front page on Christmas Day. It rarely happened — but the few times it did was sad.

Even though journalists are supposed to be objective, that doesn’t mean we don’t hope for the best when things are at their worst, or when it looks like they’re about to be. Unfortunately, we’re also deeply opinionated, and we obviously think we know best.

Every Christmas Eve, we would publish “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” as our editorial — hope in Christmas form, essentially. Now that I’m no longer with the Pacific Daily News, I thought it would be fitting to publish the editorial here. I don’t know if it will still circulate on Guam, but it felt right to breathe new life into it again. The editorial — or column — still holds true.

The piece is in the public domain, so no problem there. It was written by Francis Pharcellus Church, an editor and publisher, and originally published on Sept. 21, 1897, in The New York Sun. The newspaper republished it every Christmas season from 1924 until it closed in 1950.

The story goes that Church was responding to a letter from 8-year-old Virginia Hanlon, who asked whether Santa Claus was real. Below is her letter — and his response.

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 is so.” Please tell me the truth: Is there a Santa Claus?

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 our 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 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 that 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, or 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 supernatural beauty and glory beyond.

Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else as real and abiding.

No Santa Claus? Thank God he lives and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, maybe 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of children.

— Written by Francis P. Church in 1897

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