Ya Gotta Believe!
Santa Claus’ enduring lesson
IT had not been my plan to devote my preChristmas column to the question of whether Santa is a socialist. But how was supposed to know that the Huffington Post would issue a headline saying, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Sanders Claus”?
That headline, over a piece about Bernie Sanders, introduced a satire of the most widely reprinted editorial in the history of journalism. It was first published in 1897 in the New York Sun, about which, because I edit the modern Sun, I’m often asked.
“Please tell me the truth,” 8yearold Virginia O’Hanlon originally wrote. “Is there a Santa Claus?” The Sun handed her query to one of its editorial writers, Francis Pharcellus Church, who promptly dipped his pen in the ink of glory.
The result ran under the headline “Is there a Santa Claus?” It advised Miss O’Hanlan to ignore her “little friends,” who had put her in doubt. They had, the Sun said, become “affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.”
“They do not believe except they see,” the Sun said. “They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. 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.”
Then the famous words: “Yes, Virginia, 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.”
Which brings me to the question of whether Santa is a socialist. It leaps to mind with the Huffington Post’s insistence, in response to an inquiry from an imaginary “Virginia,” that the socialist senator from Vermont could actually win this presidential election.
The author, Travis Irvine, is described by the Huffington Post as a “comedian, filmmaker, journalist, doofus.” (Let’s ignore that redundancy.) He describes his “Vir ginia” as an 18yearold liberalarts student.
Hah. The Huffington Post advises its “Virginia” that her “college friends” who doubt Sanders’ chances are wrong. “They have been affected by the apathy of an apathetic age. They do not believe except what they see on reality TV.
“Yes, Virginia, there is a chance Bernie Sanders can win. He can as certainly as equality and humanity and democracy exist, and you know that those things abound and give to Americans their greatest freedom and pride.”
Forgive my editorial agnosticism, but aping the language of the Sun doesn’t make something true. With a few Google clicks one can discover that over the years there has sprung up a cottage industry of columns suggesting “Santa is a socialist.”
That was the point of a post in 2009 on the Web site Daily Kos, which ran a poem that began: “Santa is a socialist / His dirty secret’s out / Ol Kringle he’s a communist / I can prove beyond a doubt.”
The year before, the MinnPost Web site ran a column headlined “Santa Claus — Socialist or Communist?” Yahoo Answers has a whole thread on the question (including one dissenter asserting “Santa is a registered Democrat”).
In Los Angeles, the Wende Museum, which preserves artifacts of the Cold War, reminds that public celebrations of Christmas (and Hanukkah) were verboten in the Soviet Union. The Kremlin camarilla preferred “Grandfather Frost.”
The Russians dressed Grandfather Frost exactly like Santa. But the Red redsuit, tasseled hat and white beard failed to disguise the fact that the Communist version was, however jolly, a jackleg Santa.
Not even socialists, it seems, can get something for nothing. One has, at least, to believe. This seems to have been the point that Francis Pharcellus Church was making to the real Virginia O’Hanlon.
Then again, too, it’s not even clear that Sanders himself believes in socialism, even if he is running as a Democrat. If he loses, expect him to blame Hillary Clinton for being the Grinch.
Not that I’m making any predictions. For, as the Sun assured the real Virginia O’Hanlon, “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.”