Welcome to From the Front porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South.

Welcome to this bonus episode of From the Front porch. I'm Annie B. Jones, owner of the bookshelf, an independent bookstore in beautiful downtown Thomasville, Georgia.

And this week, I wanted to share with you one of my favorite family traditions, a reading of Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

You can find Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus in its entirety on the museum websites will put a link in the show notes.

If you are not familiar with the story, eight-year-old Virginia wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Sun.

Her family, I believe her dad had told her that if you really wanted to know the answer to something, you should ask the paper, which is a really lovely thought that I'm pretty sure no longer exists.

But that's part of the reason I find it beautiful.

And so, veteran Newsman Francis Farsilis Church wrote this editorial that has since become history's most reprinted newspaper editorial.

It has appeared in part or in whole in dozens of languages, in books, movies, and other editorials. I first saw it in the Tallahassee Democrat, my local hometown paper, when my dad showed it to me when I was right on the cusp of wondering if Santa was real.

Dear editor, I am eight 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 95th 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 and 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 child like 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.

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