We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Chicago Tribune:
“Dear Editor—
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends said they read in the Wall Street Journal that Santa Claus needs a bailout and without one there will be no Christmas and no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Chicago Tribune, it’s so.” (Papa also says the Chicago Tribune needs a bailout.) Papa tells me I will have to sell the toys Santa gave me last year on EBAY if I want new toys this year. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?”
Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West 95th Street
New York
The Tribune Responded:
Virginia, your little friends are right. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They believe what they see – and most businesses need a bailout. They think that nothing can be which is not made comprehensible and to work by the little minds of those who run the government. 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. That is why we have government.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and he needs a bailout. 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. But he has not changed the way he has run his business for generations. The business itself is important to American and in fact the whole world. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! But the government insists that he must be replaced as CEO. It will be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There could 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 bailout Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in the fairy tales from Washington. 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? He lives in Washington and has lived there for the last 50 years. Nobody understands how the economy works and why all these bailouts are needed, except a few smart people. 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, but that our government tells us. Did you ever see what they did with the initial $ 700 billion that they spent – bankers and brokers act like fairies dancing on the lawn, and still taking giant bonuses? Of course not, but that’s no proof that the money was not spent and the bonuses were not paid and are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world of economics and government.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen economic world and the world of government 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, except the knowledge that Santa Claus and Uncle Sam are one in the same.
It is important to understand that even though the elves took over Santa’s workshop like the workers at Republic Doors and Windows in Chicago, they have since gone back to work on Henry Paulson’s promise that the bailout would go through. And selling your old toys on EBAY, will strengthen the economy, other children will be able to get credit on their parents’ cards and help, this cold winter, to unfreeze the credit markets.
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.
(My sincerest apologies to Virginia and a glorious story - But her faith and that of the journalist Francis P. Church, of the The New York Sun in 1897, perhaps can only be rewarded if we understand what we are doing to ourselves – and in turn to our children. This Christmas help them understand that the things that are important, are not things at all.)
Michael D’Angelo
WSJ: Santa Needs a Bailout, Too
AP:Employee Take Over, Republic Doors and Windows
Yes, Virginia There is a Santa Claus
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