Welcome to From the Front Porch, a conversational podcast about books, small business, and life in the South. I'm Annie Jones, owner of the bookshelf and independent bookstore in beautiful downtown

Thomasville, Georgia, and Merry Christmas.

This week, it's time for our annual reading of Yes, Virginia.

There is a Santa Claus.

It's the busiest and brightest time of the year at the bookshelf, and for you two is what I'm

guessing. So I wanted to take a minute and slow down. And I think for the first time ever,

this actually falls on Christmas Day. For the past few years, I've recorded my reading of Yes, Virginia,

and without really meaning for it, too, it's become a from the front porch tradition.

It just wouldn't be the Christmas season without it, at least in my opinion. A little bit of

background. Francis P. Church's editorial, Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus, was an immediate sensation,

becoming one of the most famous editorials ever written. It first appeared in the New York Sun in

1897 and was reprinted annually until 1949 when the newspaper went out of business.

36 years after her letter was printed, Virginia O'Hanlon recalled the events that prompted her letter.

Quite naturally, I believed in Santa Claus, she said, for he had never disappointed me.

But when less fortunate little boys and girls said there wasn't

any Santa Claus, I was filled with doubts. I asked my father, and he was a little evasive on the subject.

It was a habit in our family that whenever any doubts came up as to how to pronounce a word or

some question of historical fact was in doubt, we wrote to the

question and answer column in the sun. Father would always say, if you see it in the sun,

it's so. And that settled the matter. And so Virginia sat down and wrote her parents' favorite

newspaper. Her letter found its way into the hands of a veteran editor,

Francis P. Church. Son of a Baptist minister, Church had covered the Civil War for the New York Times

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