William Herbert "Skip" Boyer, 32°
15817 N 6th Place, Phoenix Arizona 85022
Skip.Boyer@bestwestern.com

A great newspaper and a battle-hardened editorial writer took a child's question seriously and created an American Christmas classic.

When Dr. Philip O'Hanlon arrived at his New York brownstone on a warm September evening in 1897, his daughter, Virginia, was waiting for him, her bright eyes brimming with tears. With his best bedside manner, he put his arms around her and inquired as to the nature of the problem.

Between sniffles, the story came out. Christmas was coming, and Virginia had been looking forward to Santa's annual visit. Until today. Some of her little friends had told her there was no Santa Claus!

I want to know, she told her father. Is there really a Santa Claus?

You can imagine the scene at 115 W. 95th Street. Father blustered a moment, scratched his mustache, cleared his throat—and didn't have the faintest idea what to say. Then he had an inspiration, as fathers often do under pressure. Write a letter, he told her, to the New York Sun. Dr. O'Hanlon was an avid reader of the newspaper. "If you see it in the Sun, it's so," he told his worried daughter.

That faith in a newspaper was not uncommon during the last 30 years of the 19th century. A handful of journals, edited by colorful, literate men, emerged. Among them were Horace Greeley's New York Tribune, James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald, Henry Raymond's New York Times, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World, and Dr. O'Hanlon's favorite—the New York Sun, under the skilled hand of editor Charles A. Dana. Slightly more than 100,000 New Yorkers read it each day.

So little Virginia O'Hanlon sat down with her pencil and a sheet of school paper and wrote a letter to one of America's journalistic giants: "Dear Editor, I am eight 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's letter arrived on the desk of Edward P. Mitchell, Sun editor, who pondered it a while and then called one of the paper's gifted editorial writers into his office. "Answer this," he ordered the writer. Francis Pharcellus Church stared at the letter in disbelief, his walrus mustache bristling. Then he strode from the office, shaking his head. Church was an important writer, not one to be wasted on trivial assignments. He had covered the Civil War for the New York Times and founded the Army and Navy Journal. He did not respond to the foolish questions of small children.

Except this time, he did.

On Sept. 21, 1897, Church's response, along with Virginia's letter, were published at the heart of the Sun's editorial page. Church had done something Mitchell hadn't expected. He had taken the question of Santa Claus seriously. Santa was a bright spot in a skeptical, dreary world. Santa, Church wrote, was one of those real things that neither children nor men can see.

Virginia's letter and Church's response (following this article) soon became American Christmas classics. Each year, in countless newspapers and magazines, the memory of a childish question and its loving response are revived. Surprisingly, the story doesn't end here. Little Virginia grew up and went to college. She earned degrees from Hunter College in 1910 and Columbia University a year later. As Mrs. Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas, she had a long and honored career as an educator in the New York City school system. She worked with children all her life, at one time serving as principal of a school that held classes in hospitals for chronically ill children.

And she wrote another letter about Santa Claus. Her second letter was published in a small book by Grosset and Dunlap in 1937 on the 40th anniversary of the publication of Church's editorial. At the peak of her career as an educator, a grown-up Virginia wrote to answer the question of Santa's existence for a new generation of Virginias. Here it is.

"'Is there a Santa Claus?'

"Dear children of yesterday and today, when that question was asked, I, a little girl, was interested in finding out the answer just for myself. Now, grown up and a teacher, I want so much that all little children believe there really is a Santa Claus. For I understand how essential a belief in Santa Claus, and in fairies, too, is to a happy childhood.

"Some little children doubt that Santa still lives because often their letters, for one reason or another, never seem to reach him. Nurses in hospitals know who some of these children are. Teachers in great city schools know others.

"Dear children of yesterday, won't you try to seek out these trusting children of today and make sure that their letters in some way may reach Santa Claus so that 'he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood'? That, I believe, is the best way of proving there is a Santa Claus, for ourselves and for the children."

Full of years, honors and warm memories, Virginia O'Hanlon Douglas died on May 13, 1971, at the age of 81. Her father, the doctor with complete faith in a newspaper, served as a police surgeon in New York until 1932. A highly respected neurologist, he died in 1937 at the age of 74. Francis P. Church, whose gentle response to a childish question created an American classic, died at the age of 67 in 1906. It wasn't until after his death that it became known he was the author of the beloved editorial.

The New York Sun began to die a few years later. By 1925, only a shadow of its greatness remained. After a series of mergers, the combination of papers that included the Sun, crippled by strikes, finally died in 1967.

And Santa Claus? Well, as Virginia and Francis Church knew so well, he lives forever, continuing to make glad the hearts of successive generations of children.

William H. Boyer is the Director, Executive Communications, Best Western International, Inc. He is a member of Paradise Valley–Silver Trowel Lodge No. 29, Phoenix, Arizona, and serves as editor of the Lodge's Trestle Board. Brother Boyer is a member of the Philalethes Society and writes a regular column in the Society's popular magazine. A Chevalier of the Order of DeMolay, a member of the Brotherhood of the Blue Forget-Me-Not and of the Scottish Rite Bodies of Phoenix, Arizona, he is a native of Omaha, Nebraska, and holds the prestigious Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) designation from the International Association of Business Communicators. Brother Boyer has earned more than 70 regional and national awards for his writing and editorial work.