The Secret of ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus’: The Angels and Demons of Modern Journalism

Odd, one might think, for a Jewish person, but I consider it a source of personal pride to serve as proprietor of the newspaper that, in 1897, made the most famous case for the existence of Santa Claus that has ever been made. So compelling was the case that the affirmative words that open the editorial’s second paragraph, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,” might just be the best known sentence in the history of journalism.Every Christmas, scores of American newspapers across the country reprint the response by Sun editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church to a query about the existence of Santa from 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon. Virginia’s father had suggested to his daughter to write to the Sun. “If you see it in The Sun,” he told her, “it’s so.” The piece has since been translated into 20 languages and has even been set to music. It was the focus of an exhibit at the Newseum. It inspired the establishment of a school in New York. It’s been adapted to film several times and has been the subject of various animated television specials.The press followed Virginia, who grew up to become a school teacher, until her retirement. It was the centerpoint of a Macy’s ad campaign, “Believe.” The New Yorker just reprinted a feature about it written in 1936 by James Thurber. It noted that Henry Ford carried the clipping in his wallet. In a video posted on social media on Tuesday, a curator at the Library of Congress shows viewers the editorial in its original format, carefully preserved for posterity. Some 127 years of cultural impact, and an immortality of sorts for its creators is an achievement that would be the envy of many a newsman.Yet buried beneath the holiday cheer and a heartwarming interaction between a curious child and a crusty editor is a message for those of us treading the pathways of modern newspapering. The message, simply, is that it is the brand of journalism that speaks to our “better angels,” as Abraham Lincoln might put it, that is of the greatest premium in the cacophony of today’s news business. Journalism today comes in many genres. There’s news as gossip, news as theater of the absurd, news as bloodsport, as fearmongering, as advertising and promotion, news as subtle prejudice in various forms, and, of course, the great pursuit of our age: news as political activism. Then there’s that rare genre of journalism that not only educates and informs but also uplifts and inspires. It speaks to our dreams and hopes and appeals to the best versions of ourselves. It dispenses the cynics. And that’s precisely what makes the “Yes, Virginia” editorial so iconic.It is said that Church, who’d end up writing thousands of editorials, groused about the assignment when it was first presented to him by the acting editor of the Sun at the time, Edward Page Mitchell. Then in a single burst, Church wrote the 416 words that would echo through the ages. They were published in the Sun beneath an item on a newly invented chainless bicycle. “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,” the Sun replied to Virginia. “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.” While it’s Virginia herself that’s the protagonist in this story, it’s the advice of her father that merits a closer look. Where does one find in the social media age a publication that one can definitively turn to? “You are the news,” Elon Musk likes to tell his 200 million followers on X. Yet his own platform proves the challenge. Its algorithm most often advances our basest form of engagement. It’s hard to imagine Virginia’s father telling her, “If you see it on X, it’s so.” It’s also true that so many newspapers have lost their way, but the story of Virginia reminds us of the very best that journalism can be. To paraphrase Frank Church himself, “No journalism! Thank God! It lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, true journalism will continue to uplift the heart of humankind.”

The Secret of ‘Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus’: The Angels and Demons of Modern Journalism

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