Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 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

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical 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 external 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 you 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 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, 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 lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

Smithsonian Magazine has posted some unusual portraits of jolly Saint Nick and asked readers to vote for the Scariest Santa. Here’s my choice:

It’s a 1939 Christmas card from a Hungarian-born American artist named Ralph Fabri. Surely penned against the turmoil of World War II, today it calls to mind the grave dangers of runaway global warming.

Warmists really cannot help themselves, using this old painting to prop up their dying religion, because atmospheric CO2 higher than 350ppm might cause the world to burn. Just like when it was well over 1000ppm during the reign of the dinosaurs, and tiny mammals chowed down on baked T Rex…..what’s that? The temperatures didn’t correlate to the atmospheric CO2? That’s weird.

Of course, Doniger is blaming every weather event of the past year on “climate change”, because weather never happened before. And drones on for the need to kill power plants because of CO2, make cars less safe to conform to “green” initiatives, and save the world from weather events. Yet, the Warmists still cannot scientifically say that the warming during this time period is caused mostly or solely by Mankind. So, instead, they have to attempt to scare people, and co-opt paintings above and try and ruin Christmas.

Some electroshock therapy may be necessary.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

(Washington Post) Each side offers what it considers compelling evidence.

Real fir — along with pine and spruce — has benefits beyond a fresh smell that says Christmas, supporters say. The trees’ purchase encourages farmers to keep planting acres that absorb carbon dioxide from the air, soak up storm-water runoff full of nutrient and sediment pollution before it pours into waterways such as the Chesapeake Bay, and provide habitat for wildlife.

The real trees also have a smaller carbon footprint than ones made with plastic and shipped mostly from factories in China, said Stephanie Flack, Potomac River Project director for the Nature Conservancy. “This time of year, while people are thinking of gifts they get from under the tree, they should be thinking about the gift from trees,” Flack said.

But the American Christmas Tree Association would say that Freshley’s fake-tree purchase was the greener choice. The group cites a study to support its view that fake trees have a lower carbon footprint — if consumers hold on to fake trees for six to 10 years — considering the energy it takes to chop, water and transport fresh trees annually.

Can’t they just give it a break for a change? Is it really necessary to drag everything into their unhinged pseudo-religion? I’d say these people need to get a hobby, but, this is their hobby. Complaining about how Everyone Else puts out CO2, right before they jump in the full sized SUV to hit the grocery store and pick the kids up, then have a big holiday cocktail party and say everyone else should drive a hybrid.

(The Spec) The yurts are barely dismantled and the tents only just rolled up, but there is already a new movement on the horizon — Occupy Christmas.

Canadian magazine Adbusters — which prompted the Occupy Wall Street camp and subsequent set-ups around North America, including Toronto’s St. James Park — has put out a call for another round of capitalism-disturbing.

This time, the target is the gift-giving season.

“Christmas has been hijacked for us,” said Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief at Adbusters, a non-profit, Vancouver-based alternative magazine. “It’s become this ugly, soulless, consumer-fest.”

On one hand, Lasn has a point. One he has been pushing for 20 years, with his “buy nothing” campaign, but, a point none-the-less. Consumerism has become too big for the Christmas season. But, that is the intent of the way in which these lefties are pushing their movement, to get people to say “hey, they do have a point.” Meanwhile, their solutions tend to be more government regulation and involvement.

Interestingly, it is those on the left who have attempted to take the point of the season out of it, namely, the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. But, rather than saying “hey, we’re not going to participate (because we will be really mad if we don’t get the gifts we want)”, the Leftists want to ruin it for everyone else

The ideas for Occupy Christmas, which Lasn likens to “shenanigans,” include:

•a Santa sit-in, whereby protesters sit outside a store and encourage people to cut up their credit cards;

•a Jesus walk, where people put on a mask in the Holy Son’s likeness and walk through malls, to create an eerie sentiment;

•a “whirly mart,” in which would-be shoppers fill their carts with products but abandon them at the cash register.

“This movement is somewhat about angering people,” Lasn said.

Excellent! What a perfect way to get people on your side! Anger and annoy them.

It all starts with their Buy Nothing Day, which is today, Black Friday. I guess I’m an Occupier, because I’m not planning on getting near any retail store today. I never do. Of course, that’s my choice. I do not want to get up. Nor do I want to deal with the crowds. Anyhow

Adbusters created an #OCCUPYXMAS hashtag to mark the movement for those to follow and share online. As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 1,600 people had tweeted the page and some 20,000 had liked it on Facebook.

Is anyone else thinking that this is not going to end well? We’ve seen the insanity that has gone on with the OWS movement. What’ll happen when these nuts start coming in to retail stores and malls?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

“American Atheists announced Monday on their “No God Blog” a new billboard campaign in their continued effort in “laboring for the civil liberties of atheists,” but in reality just upsetting those who disagree with their theological stance. A press release for the American Atheists’ new holiday season billboard campaign reads:

“American Atheists announced today that their new billboard is going up in several locations nationwide, including the New Jersey side of the Lincoln Tunnel: the same location as last year’s famous ‘You KNOW it’s a MYTH’ billboard. The new billboard will also be going up in Ohio and Florida.

This year’s holiday season billboard features pictures of Neptune, Jesus, Santa Claus, and the Devil and says, ‘37 Million Americans know MYTHS when they see them. What do you see?’”

Anticipating the inevitability that their billboard will offend others, Dave Silverman, the president of American Atheists, said, “When you question someone’s long-held beliefs and doctrine they are going to be immediately offended and be on the defensive: it’s a known psychological phenomenon.”

More here

Being offensive will always get you disliked. Is that what they aim at? I guess they are so hate-filled that it just bursts out.

Odd that it’s OK for atheists to tell Christians that they are wrong but Christians get attacked for “hate speech” if they tell homosexuals that they are wrong.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.). For a daily critique of Leftist activities, see DISSECTING LEFTISM. To keep up with attacks on free speech see TONGUE-TIED. Also, don’t forget your daily roundup of pro-environment but anti-Greenie news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH . Email me here

11/09/11 8:51PM
_____________________

Yes, you can thank the Obama administration for this one

(Heritage) President Obama’s Agriculture Department today announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees—the Christmas Tree Tax—to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of Christmas trees.

OK, it’s not much, and it only applies to those who sell more than 500 Christmas trees…..are we still allowed to say that? Isn’t it now “Holiday Tree”?……., but, why would they do this?

In the Federal Register of November 8, 2011, Acting Administrator of Agricultural Marketing David R. Shipman announced that the Secretary of Agriculture will appoint a Christmas Tree Promotion Board. The purpose of the Board is to run a “program of promotion, research, evaluation, and information designed to strengthen the Christmas tree industry’s position in the marketplace; maintain and expend existing markets for Christmas trees; and to carry out programs, plans, and projects designed to provide maximum benefits to the Christmas tree industry” (7 CFR 1214.46(n)). And the program of “information” is to include efforts to “enhance the image of Christmas trees and the Christmas tree industry in the United States” (7 CFR 1214.10).

Here is government at its best: putting a tax, albeit a tiny one, on something that everyone, including the aliens who plan on destroying humanity over globull warming, knows about. There is absolutely no need for Big Government to help with marketing, research, evaluation, and information that strengthens the Christmas tree industry. Said program will probably cost more than any taxes taken in, just in administration.

Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 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

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical 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 external 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 you 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 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, 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 lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

And a Merry Christmas from deep down in my heart to all my friends and visitors out there.

If you would like to know the background on the letter, you can go to the 2004 posting of this.

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

If a group of Watsonville environmentalists have their way, the newspaper you read today will be under a Christmas tree next Saturday.

No, they’re not asking you to give your loved ones week-old news. They’re advocating using old newspaper and paper bags as gift wrap in an effort to get people dreaming of a more green than white Christmas this year.

“Use the sports section for people who like sports, the gardening section for people who like gardening, things like that,” said Nancy Lockwood, an environmental projects manager for the city of Watsonville.

That should work out well. Enjoy the looks you get, eco-nuts. But, wait, you buy newspapers? That’s bad for the climate: kills trees, which scrub the atmosphere of a necessary-for-life gas, you know.

And then

So, this year, I’m getting rid of those pesky plastic bags, and, in turn, will give Mother Earth a merry green Christmas.

Plastic bags have an unhealthy impact on the environment in a variety of ways. Bags find their way into oceans, rivers, lakes and streams where wildlife choke and strangle on them. A 2005 World Wildlife Fund reported more than 200 species of wildlife have been killed by plastic bags.

Cassuandra Barber actually has a good point about the bags. Yet, it is just this kind of unhinged alarmism that turns people off, this holier-than-thou attitude, this shaming. They take a good idea, wrap it in hysteria, and people are turned off to good ideas.

Greenest retailers

If you live in a town where Big Box retailers are the go-to destination for holiday shopping, Greenopia’s 2010 Guide to the Greenest Retailers is for you. The online directory has released their annual research-based list of the greenest retailers, ranking Walmart, Best Buy, Office Depot, Target, and others, on their efforts to be environmentally-conscious. Find out who the greenest major retailer is, below.

Uh oh, Walmart was one of the best rated, Liberals, with 2 out of 4 leafs, matching Best Buy and Office Depot. None ranked received 3 leafs, only Ikea received 4. The rest earned either 1 leaf or no leafs. Of course, climate alarmists/eco-weenies do not care, they’re like kids: they play at being “green”, but, then reality hits, and they have to go get their big electricity sucking products.

Interestingly, over at the Huff Post, they actually have some good “green” Christmas present ideas, ones which I, for the most part, support.

Oh, and Lord Tebbit has a question

…but perhaps one of my blog readers will be able to explain why restoring the world to temperatures it survived in the past would be an unmitigated disaster in the future.

Well, because! /moonbat off

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach. sit back and Relax. we’ll dRive!