(In honor of my Wiccan Friend) A little letter of hope.
My friend is a Wiccan but she loves this time of year. Tonight she is having her Yuletide pre-party and the HUGE Yuletide party tomorrow. She celebrates Christmas with her Christian Friends and Hanukka with her Jewish friends. She believe that This time of year is a renewal of the human spirit and what good Humanity can do for one another. She calls this the season of hope.
One thing she does every year is to read the following:
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2009/12/yes-virginia-there-is-santa-claus.html
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 W.95th St
VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except [what] 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, an 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 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.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
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.
She often adds that Santa Claus may be the human incarnate of the spirit HE and his various versions will live on as long as a human being does a simple act of kindness on the coldest night or a moment of peace is done in the most violent war.
(some additional infomation of the letters and authors:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/199704A43.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yes,_Virginia,_there_is_a_Santa_Claus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Pharcellus_Church )
To all Wiccan NEO-Pagans and all those who still that child-like heart alive during this time of year- May love and peace live on.