The grudging emergence of American journalism's classic editorial: New details about "Is There A Santa Claus?"

The grudging emergence of American journalism's classic editorial: New details about “Is There A Santa Claus?” American Journalism, 22, (2) Spring 2005

A grudging acceptance

It is widely believed that the editorial was an immediate success and that it was reprinted in the Sun at every Christmas season after its publication. Such notions, however, are disproved by a thorough review of year-end issues of the newspaper from 1897 to 1949—the latter date being two weeks before the Sun folded. The editorial was in fact reluctantly embraced. The Sun did not reprint it until December 1902—and did so then with more than a hint of annoyance. That it reprinted the editorial at all was undeniably a bow to its readers and their many requests.

In reintroducing “Is There A Santa Claus?” in 1902, the Sun noted: “Since its original publication, the Sun has refrained from reprinting the article on Santa Claus which appeared several years ago, but this year requests for its reproduction have been so numerous that we yield.” The prefatory comment closed with a gratuitous swipe: “Scrap books seem to be wearing out.”49

The Sun’s disinclination to republish content—or indulge in what it called “repetitions from the past”—was not confined to “Is There A Santa Claus?” During the campaign against the World and Journal in 1897, the Sun cited but rejected a reader’s suggestion that it reprint a letter assailing the World and Pulitzer. The letter had appeared six months earlier. “Since then,” the Sun explained in an editorial, “the stream of fresh denunciations [against the World] is too voluminous” to permit the republication of what it called “repetitions from the past.”50

The Sun’s reluctance to republish or to say much at all about “Is There A Santa Claus?” gave rise to error elsewhere. The Arizona Republican published “Is There A Santa Claus?” on 25 December 1897, but mistakenly attributed the editorial to the Dana, saying: “One of the best things the late Charles A. Dana ever wrote, and which ought to sanctify children’s and all humanity’s memory of that great man, was the following editorial reply to an anxious inquiry by a little 8-year-old girl.”51

The Sun did not again publish “Is There A Santa Claus?” until the Christmas following the death of Francis Church in 1906. In reintroducing the editorial that year, the sneering tone that accompanied republication in 1902 was absent. The Sun acknowledged the appeals of its readers, stating in an introductory comment that the editorial was reprinted “on this Christmas morning at the request of many friends of the Sun, of Santa Claus, of the little Virginias of yesterday and to-day, and of the author of the essay, the late F.P. Church.”52 After Church’s death, the Sun was somewhat more inclined to republish the editorial. In the ten years from 1898–1907, “Is There A Santa Claus?” was reprinted in the Sun at Christmastime only twice. In the ten subsequent years, it was republished in the Sun six times.

By 1913, sneering references to worn-out scrapbooks were gone: instead, the Sun likened “Is There A Santa Claus?” to the Gettysburg Address—a work well known to readers. “Perhaps it is not too much to say that it must be classed with Lincoln’s Gettysburg address respecting the number of those who know its phrases and regard affectionately its sentiment and teachings,” the Sun said in reintroducing the editorial on 25 December 1913.53 The Sun on that occasion acknowledged the editorial’s profound appeal to readers and its formerly diffident response to requests for republication: “Every Christmas season for the past sixteen years, the Sun has been asked by many of its friends to reprint the editorial article entitled ‘Is There A Santa Claus?’ … Sometimes we have complied with the request; sometimes it has seemed better not to do so.”54 The Sun did not explain why it sometimes “seemed better not to” republish the editorial. But undeniably, the newspaper was warming to the editorial. It said three years later in reprinting “Is There A Santa Claus?”: “Perhaps no other editorial article ever written has been republished so often or has been read by so many millions of people who have come to regard it as one of the loveliest utterances of the Christmas sentiment.”55

Readers over the years implored the Sun not to fail to reprint the editorial. “It will neither be Christmas nor the Sun without it,” declared one reader in 1927.56 “Every year, as I grow a little older, I find added significance in its profound thoughts,” wrote another reader, in 1940.57

The Sun sometimes expressed astonishment that “Is There A Santa Claus?” had become so timeless and so admired. In 1918, for example, the Sun declared it was reprinting the editorial “with extreme pleasure that the vitality and charm of this famous piece of Christmas literature are unimpaired after a period long enough to make a voter of a new born babe.”58 But it was not until the 1920s when the editorial began appearing prominently and without fail at Christmastime. The Sun’s owner, Frank A. Munsey, ordered “Is There A Santa Claus?” to lead the editorial columns59 on Christmas Eve in 1924—a move that signaled the Sun’s complete recognition of the exceptionality of an editorial it called an “immortal expression of faith.”60 In the years afterward, “Is There A Santa Claus?” was the Sun’s lead editorial on 23 or 24 December.61

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NOTES

49. “Santa Claus,” New York Sun (25 December 1902).

50. “A Steady Revolt,” New York Sun. The Sun did reprint a brief passage from the letter which the reader had asked the Sun to “kindly reproduce.”

51. “There Is A Santa Claus,” Arizona Republican (25 December 1897): 7. The newspaper was renamed Arizona Republic in 1930. In addition, the Literary Digest printed Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter and the Sun’s editorial reply in its issue dated 25 December 1897. See “Topics of the Day: Some Christmas Reflections,” Literary Digest 14, 35 (25 December 1897): 1021.

52. “Is There A Santa Claus?” New York Sun (25 December 1906): 6. In addition, the editorial was the first entry in a collection, published in 1905, of notably cheery essays and commentaries that had appeared in the Sun. See Casual Essays of the Sun (New York: Robert Grier Cooke, 1905), 1–3.

53. “Is There A Santa Claus?” New York Sun (25 December 1913).

54. “Is There A Santa Claus?” New York Sun (25 December 1913).

55. “’Is There A Santa Claus?’” New York Sun (25 December 1916): 10.

56. Charles H. Clark, “To-morrow on This Page,” letter to the editor, New York Sun (23 December 1927): 16.

57. “Canevaro, “In Appreciation,” New York Sun (27 December 1940).

58. “’Is There A Santa Claus?’” New York Sun (25 December 1918).

59. See untitled editorial comment, New York Sun (24 December 1925): 10.

60. Untitled editorial comment, New York Sun (24 December 1925).

61. The editorial also figured in an ill-considered Depression era gesture by the Sun’s management. According to Haynes Johnson, a Washington Post columnist, the Sun in the 1930s gave employes framed reprints of “Is There A Santa Claus?” Johnson wrote: “In all the years my father worked as a reporter on the Sun, in time bringing honor to himself and his paper, that was the only Christmas bonus he ever received. Every Christmas that I can remember he would retell, [with] fury and relish, that story of holiday insensitivity in a time of great personal suffering. [The story] became part of our family Christmas tradition, one that still makes me smile so long after whenever I think of it.” See Haynes Johnson, “The Old Wisdom May, After All, Offer a New Sense of Serenity,” Washington Post (21 December 1980): A3.

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