It’s Christmas! Merry Christmas. I’m posting from Christmas Eve because I’m probably currently drinking eggnog and deciding whether or not to suspend vegetarianism for my granddad’s bacon.
This time of year, any story to happen often gets characterized as a Christmas tragedy or a Christmas miracle. The media may overhype some holiday danger, but it at least matches it with some good news. I have sifted through the stories and curated my favourites, for you, about giving and the spirit of Christmas.
If you aren’t aware of Yes, Virginia, let me take care of that for you
clipping from the Newseum
In 1897, a girl in New York named Virginia O’Hanlon asked her dad if Santa Claus was real and was told that if the Sun printed it, it would be true. Her plaintive letter got answered by a jaded war correspondent named Francis Pharcellus Church (better than his name: his mustache). The result is the most reprinted editorial in the English language:
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 childlike 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.
The editorial is printed in its entirety at the Newseum. I’m fairly shocked I’ve never came across it–the story of the editorial, as well as its message, spread through children’s books and TV shows throughout the 20th century, and the message of Santa Claus is an idea, it is very similar to what my mom said to me when I grappled with those same questions. It stuck with O’Hanlon–in a 1963 interview with the CBC, Virginia, who had become a teacher, principal, and grandmother, said it changed her life. “It’s affected it really very much…the older I grow, the more I realize what a perfect philosophy it is for life…having been a recipient of kindness, I feel a sort of responsibility about living up to some of the ideals,” she said. “It’s brought into my life many, many, interesting and kind things that I don’t think would have been there if he hadn’t written that.”
What do you do with 450 letters addressed to Santa Claus?
Jim and Dylan are a couple living at No. 7, West 22nd Street in New York. They are not Santa Claus. But they recieved over 450 letters to him! For some reason that even Google can’t answer, kids from all over the New York area believed that that was the place to go. Some of them range from the pedestrian, like a kid with bad grammar looking for a “cup of Dora”, to the sad, like, “can you help my mom by getting us some presents?”
Wracked with guilt about what to do with the letters, Jim and Dylan stepped up–they asked co-workers and friends to buy the presents listed in individual letters, and posted about it on their Facebook. They ended up playing Santa surprisingly well–they were able to field about half of the letters they had recieved, with the rest going to the post office to be fulfilled by anyone interested in helping out. “Dylan and I are only two elves, but we made a little dent,” Jim said. How dreary would the world be, if there were no Santa Claus? [Gawker]
Six year old forgoes birthday presents, teams up to help single mom
Marlo Fieldt. Photo by Kathy Michaels (Capital News)
It was not shaping up to be a great Christmas for Marlo Fieldt. A mother of six children in Kelowna, Fieldt was cheerful in the face of great challenge as the childrens’ father, her ex-husband, got deported for not filing the right papers when when coming into Canada eight years earlier. About to be evicted because she was late on rent, she wasn’t sure how she was going to deal with it and wasn’t sure how to work welfare, but still kept a brave face–so a co-worker stepped up to help.
Natalie Frantze, who works with Fieldt, got her family to chip in to help bring Christmas to Marlo’s big happy family. It came in different packages–some gave food, some gave money, and family member Colin, who works at Milestones, brought them onside, too; they’re now collecting donations for the family. Six-year-old Lyda McGale, who’s a neighbour to the Frantze family, stepped in too–at her birthday earlier in the year, she asked her friends to bring money she could give away, rather than gifts. She was able to pitch in a $100 gift card to Toys ‘R Us.
According to the story by Kathy Michaels, the family’s out of imminent peril, and Christmas has been saved once again. Fieldt is getting help applying to welfare, and fundraising efforts are still ongoing–call Milestones for more information. “It was totally unexpected and amazing,” Fieldt said. According to Frantze, her family had been inspired.”My friends and family are saying ‘just let me know what I can do, let me help out in any way,'” she said. But it’s kind of them who are inspiring. [Kelowna Capital News]
I hope your heart grew three sizes today. It’s easy to feel unhappy about Christmas and commercialization, but these stories are what makes it important. Like F. P. Church wrote in his famous editorial, Santa Claus is an idea that lives wherever love and generosity does–in a girl inspired as a child, a couple picked for the task by accident, or a six-year old girl who just wants to help. May he live forever.