While others age, Virginia O’Hanlon is forever a little girl thanks to The New York Sun. Her letter asking if there’s a Santa Claus, and the paper’s response, helps each new generation of parents answer childhood’s trickiest question — and encourages everyone to hold onto the magic of Christmas.
“I am 8 years old,” O’Hanlon wrote the Sun in September of 1897. “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?”
