The Origin of “Yes, Virginia, There Is a…”

You probably have heard the saying. Because the editorial in which it first appeared is often reprinted around this time of year, you may even have read it in context. But you may not know that the first appearance of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” was not in December but three months earlier. September 21, 1897, to be exact.

That year eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote to the editor of The Sun, a popular New York City newspaper, saying that some of her friends said Santa Claus did not exist. Why did this precocious child write to a newspaper? Because, she said in her letter, “Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”

Francis P. Church, a staffer at The Sun and a frequent editorial writer, was asked to reply to the letter. His response, which was unsigned, appeared in the paper under the heading “Is There a Santa Claus?” It was slightly more than 400 words, beginning with “Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age.”

The second paragraph of the five-paragraph response began with the famous line:

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….

The editorial ended: “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.”