Keller @ Large: 'Tis The Season To Believe

BOSTON (CBS) – This morning's commentary is for the children in your household, especially the ones who may be just old enough to wonder if there really is a Santa Claus.

Perhaps they see Santas around town and wonder how there can be so many, or an older sibling or friend may have scoffed at the idea of Santa.

Well kids, you know I will always give it to you straight, so gather 'round as I share a portion of a 120-year-old editorial in a New York newspaper responding to a little girl named Virginia.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist...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 eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove?

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 men can see, nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world

No Santa Claus? He lives, and ten times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.