Culture

In a Word . . . Unseen

‘There is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist’

Children pose for photos as a diver dressed as Santa Claus performs at COEX aquarium in Seoul. Photograph: Ed Jones/AFP/Getty Images

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Dec 22 2018 - 06:00

"Dear Editor,
"I am 8 years old. Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Please tell me the honest truth, is there a Santa Claus?"
Virginia O'Hanlon,
115, West 95th Street, New York."

"Dear Virginia,
"Your friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible to their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be adults' or children's, are little.

“In this great universe of ours, we are as a mere insect, an ant, in its intellect as compared with the boundless world about it, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

“Yes, 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.

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“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.

“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 adults can see. And 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.

“There is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest person, nor even the united strength of all the strongest people 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, 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

"The Editor."
(from The New York Sun, 1897).

Unseen from Old English ungesewen, Dutch ongezien, German ungesehen.

inaword@irishtimes.com