Are the stockings all “hung by the chimney with care”?
Is your home ready for Christmas? Have the cookies and treats all been baked, the presents wrapped and, as Clement Clarke Moore wrote, the stockings all “hung by the chimney with care”?
All the gifts I’m giving are already wrapped. I’m not like those people who wait until the last minute to shop. Retailers are hoping many of you are like that because, as a wire story in Thursday’s Gazette suggested, sales have been slow.
How do you celebrate Christmas? Will your celebration be a little more solemn, perhaps a bit more heartfelt, with the tragedy in Newtown so fresh in our minds?
My wife and I will gather with the Peck family this weekend before our grandkids, Remy and Lexi, arrive in time for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They probably didn’t get snow down in Hoffman Estates, Ill., and would be delighted to again engage “Papa,” as they call me, in making a snowman. This snow might not cooperate, however, so we might have to instead head for a sledding hill.
In Monday’s Gazette editorial, we’ll put the annual celebration of Christ’s birth in perspective and offer our Christmas message to readers.
Greg Peck can be reached at (608) 755-8278 or gpeck@gazettextra.com. Or follow him on Twitter or Facebook
Dec 23, 2012 at 7:38 p.m.
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I read the above story of Yes Virgina every year. I have been doing this since I was 10 years old. It is the perfect way to spend Christmas eve after all the hetic preperations are done. I wanted to share it with you. It would be oh so nice if the Gazette could re-print this wonderful story.
Dec 23, 2012 at 7:35 p.m.
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Eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon wrote a letter to the editor of New York's Sun, and the quick response was printed as an unsigned editorial Sept. 21, 1897. The work of veteran newsman Francis Pharcellus Church has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial, appearing in part or whole in dozens of languages in books, movies, and other editorials, and on posters and stamps.
"DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
"Papa says, 'If you see it in THE SUN it's so.'
"Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?
"VIRGINIA O'HANLON.
"115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET."
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. 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.
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. Alas! 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 in 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. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may 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. 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.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Dec 22, 2012 at 9:17 a.m.
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Merry Christmas Greg and best wishes for 2013 to you, your wife and family. Always enjoy your blog! Keep writing and sharing your life!
Dec 21, 2012 at 5:30 p.m.
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No need to hang my stocking. I won't be getting anything now that I had my comment on another site removed by the site police. I was bad, but I could not resist. Chunk of coal for me.
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