Accounting for the incongruous timing

A modest mystery has surrounded the editorial’s anomalous timing: 62Why was a Christmastime editorial published three months before the holiday? No exogenous factors seem to have prompted Virginia O’Hanlon’s inquiry. No prominent news reports appeared in August or September 1897 that discussed Santa Claus, Christmas, or related topics. Reports did circulate later in the year about efforts to discourage children from believing in Santa Claus.63 A kindergarten in Philadelphia, for example, advocated telling children who asked that Santa Claus did not exist. “As long as [the child] catches the spirit of love and giving that is in the air,” the kindergarten’s director said, explaining the policy, “it is all we want.”64

 

The Sun published “Is There A Santa Claus?” eight days after the school year began in New York City in September 1897,65 coincidental timing that has over the years encouraged speculation that Virginia O’Hanlon and her friends were weighing the existence of Santa Claus as their classes resumed after summer vacation.66 While it plausibly accounts for the reference in Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter her skeptical “little friends,” such a scenario is unlikely. Discussing the editorial years later, Virginia O’Hanlon said she addressed her letter to the Sun’s question-and-answer column and waited impatiently for the newspaper to publish a response.67

 

The Sun’s question-and-answer column, usually called “Notes and Queries,” was not a daily or even a weekly feature. It appeared irregularly on Sundays, offering pithy and often witty replies to inquiries such as: “What is the derivation of ‘bunny,’ as used in the term ‘bunny rabbit?’”68 and “Please state the exact method by which ‘selling short’ in stocks and grain is performed.”69 Given its fact-based quality, the “Notes and Queries” column clearly was not best-suited to address a question about the existence of Santa Claus.

 

O’Hanlon recalled that the Sun did not promptly take up her inquiry. “After writing to the Sun,” she said in December 1959, “I looked every day for the simple answer I expected. When it didn’t appear, I got disappointed and forgot about it.”70 One of her seven grandchildren, James Temple, said he recalls his grandmother saying that “a long time”—perhaps weeks—had passed before the Sun ‘s editorial appeared.71 Those comments indicate that O’Hanlon’s letter asking about Santa Claus was sent to the Sun well before the start of the school year in mid-September 1897.

 

After arriving at the Sun, her letter was probably overlooked or ignored for an extended period. That there was such a gap seems certain, given both O’Hanlon’s recollections about having waited for a reply and the accounts of Church’s authorship. Those accounts say Church wrote the famous editorial in “a short time”72 or “hastily, in the course of the day’s work, and without the remotest idea of its destiny of permanent interest and value.”73

 

In any event, the most plausible explanation for the editorial’s incongruous timing lies in the excited speculation of a little girl who, after celebrating her birthday in mid-summer, began to wonder about the gifts she would receive at Christmas. “‘My birthday was in July and, as a child, I just existed from July to December, wondering what Santa Claus would bring me,’” O’Hanlon told an audience of Connecticut high school students in December 1959. “‘I think I was a brat.’” 74

 

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NOTES

 

62. The editorial’s unusual timing tripped up at least one scholar. In her study of Charles Dana, Janet Steele mistakenly wrote that the editorial reply to Virginia O’Hanlon was “published on Christmas Day 1897.” See Steele, The Sun Shines for All: Journalism and Ideology in the Life of Charles A. Dana (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 109.

63. Such efforts were criticized by the New York Journal among other newspapers. The Journal declared: “Let us keep Santa Claus despite the outcry of the people who think that no deception can be amiable. There never was a child worse for belief in him.” See “Christmas, and Santa Claus,” New York Journal (25 December 1897): 6.

64. Cited in “Santa Claus to be Banished,” Philadelphia Press (22 December 1897): 8. In an editorial condemning the policy, the newspaper stated: “The arguments against the myth if carried out logically would rule out all fairyland from a child’s life, would suppress the habit of the game of ‘pretending’ and make of children not imaginative human beings but wretched prigs to whom a large part of the literature of all ages would be a closed book.” See “The Tilt at Santa Claus,” Philadelphia Press (23 December 1897): 6.

65. “Public Schools Open To-Day,” New York Sun (13 September 1897): 4.

66. See Vinciguerra, “Yes, Virginia, a Thousand Times Yes,” New York Times. See also, Herrmann, “It’s A Wonderful Lie,” Chicago Sun-Times.

67. Cited in Illson, “Prompted Santa Claus Editorial,” New York Times.

68. “Notes and Queries,” New York Sun (12 September 1897), sect. 2, p. 3. The Sun’s reply: “Bun is provincial English for rabbit; bunny is a diminutive. Bunny-rabbit is pleonastic.”

69. “Notes and Queries,” New York Sun (October 1897)

70. Cited in “Writer of Famed ‘Santa’ Letter Has Heightened Christmas Spirit,” newspaper clipping from December 1959 (publication data missing), in possession of James Temple, North Chatham, NY.

71. James Temple, telephone interviews with author, 7 November 2003, and 19 April 2004.

72. Edward P. Mitchell, Memoirs of an Editor: Fifty Years of American Journalism (New York: Scribner’s, 1924), 112. Mitchell’s account says “Church bristled and pooh-poohed at the subject when I suggested he write a reply to Virginia O’Hanlon; but he took the letter and turned with an air of resignation to his desk” to write.

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

74. Cited in “Writer of Famed ‘Santa’ Letter Has Heightened Christmas Spirit.” See also, Fred Kaplan, “A Child’s Query Echoes Across the Ages,” Boston Globe (22 December 1997): A3.