Story 11 of 12 · United States of America · 1897
Is There a Santa Claus?
Who it suits: Every age.
In 1897, an eight-year-old girl in New York wrote to a newspaper to ask whether Santa Claus was real, and the newspaper answered her on its editorial page. Virginia O’Hanlon lived at 115 West Ninety-Fifth Street in Manhattan, and some of her friends had told her that there was no Santa Claus. Her father, Philip O’Hanlon, a doctor, told her to write to The Sun, because, as Virginia put it in her letter, “Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’”
The answer was written by Francis Pharcellus Church, an editor at The Sun, who had reported on the American Civil War as a young journalist. It was printed on 21 September 1897, without his name, as editorials were at the time. Church’s name was made public only after his life ended, in 1906.
Virginia O’Hanlon grew up to become a teacher and later a school principal in New York City, and she answered letters about the editorial for the rest of her life.
In the book, Is There a Santa Claus? is printed in full with four notes beside the words they explain, its map, its city view and its illustration.
