Keller @ Large: 'Yes, Virginia,' Lives On

BOSTON (CBS) -- One hundred and seventeen years ago, an 8-year-old girl from Manhattan named Virginia wrote a letter to the editor of a local newspaper. She told him some of her friends were questioning the existence of Santa Claus, and she wanted to know if he really existed.

There's a reason why his response is the most reprinted newspaper editorial ever.

"Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," he wrote. "He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist."

A world with no Santa Claus would be dreary, he explains, "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 eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished…"

He tells Virginia not to worry that no one ever sees Santa.

"…[T]hat 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…. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world."

And he tells Virginia that there's a curtain blocking our view of this unseen world. "Only faith, fancy, 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."

So those gifts you get today? Don't let anybody tell you Santa wasn't behind it.

He delivers the faith, poetry and romance that makes the gift what it is.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

You can listen to Keller At Large on WBZ News Radio every weekday at 7:55 a.m. You can also watch Jon on WBZ-TV News.

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