This Day In History

21 September: The 'Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus' editorial published in the New York Sun

In 1897, a coroner's assistant (Dr. Philip O'Hanlon) from Manhattan was asked by his eight year old daughter (Virginia) if Santa Claus really existed. A few of her friends had been saying that he didn't exist, and she wanted to know the truth. The good doctor suggested she write to The Sun newspaper, saying "If you see it in The Sun, it's so."

He may have been dodging the question, but he unwittingly gave one of the paper's editors, Francis Pharcellus Church, an opportunity to have some fun with it. Church was a war correspondent during the American Civil War, a time which saw great suffering and a corresponding lack of hope and faith in much of society. Although the paper ran the editorial in the seventh place on the editorial page, below even an editorial on the newly invented "chainless bicycle", its message was very moving to many people who read it.

More than a century later it remains the most reprinted editorial ever to run in any newspaper in the English language. Every year, Virginia's letter and Church's response are read at the Yule Log ceremony at Church's alma mater, Columbia College of Columbia University. The story itself has been translated into many different forms of media, including childrens story books, films, television shorts and most recently, a CGI animated story with Neil Patrick Harris, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Alfred Molina providing the lead voices.

Below is the editorial in it's entirety. Feel free to read it in response to any questions from eight-year-olds who are worried a creepy, bearded man will stop trying to break into their house at night.