Something different and interesting.

[Lo.Com.Denom]

Found this on the Dresden Dolls myspace page. A letter writen to the New York Sun newspaper in 1897:

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

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 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.

(Printed as is, from the New York Sun, 1897)

Nice, isn't it?

[Nightfall]

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.

Seems like her little friends had critical thinking skills and noted lack of, or contrary evidence. I wonder why we spend so much energy on trying to beguile children into believing fairies and Santa and other nonsense exists?

[RevDisk]

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see.

Seems like her little friends had critical thinking skills and noted lack of, or contrary evidence. I wonder why we spend so much energy on trying to beguile children into believing fairies and Santa and other nonsense exists?

Prepares them for life.  So they don't wonder why so much of their paycheck disappears and what's it spent on?  

[Perd Hapley]

Have you all ever heard the phrase, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus"?  That's a pretty well-known letter; I think it's reprinted in a lot of newspapers and magazines around Christmas time.

[Lo.Com.Denom]

No, I hadn't heard of it before. It just struck me that a hundred years later, no editor would even bother to answer an 8-year-old's letter, let alone spend so much time on the reply (not in a UK newspaper, anyway).

We all laugh at the blissninnies for being so child-like and naive, but if kids were as cynical as us, they wouldn't really be children, would they? If, at 8-years-old, I knew how badly adulthood sucks most of the time, I probably would have topped myself! So I say let 'em believe in fairies and Santa -- they'll find out soon enough that "life's a bitch and then you die".