yes, virginia, there is a santa claus

Our fantasies and myths are important, and often they are spiritually if not literally true. This saying originated in 1897 in a newspaper editorial by Francis Pharcellus Church, written in reply to a girl named Virginia who said that her friends had told her there was no Santa Claus. Church also said about Santa Claus that “ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”