No, Virginia, There Is No Santa Claus

Below is the never before published "private" reply to  eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's letter to The (New York) Sun asking if there was indeed such a person as Santa Claus.  This private reply was written by the paper's editor, Francis Pharcellus Church, and hand delivered to Virginia by courier shortly after the "cleaned up" version was published on 21 September 1897.

Francis Pharcellus Churd hand delivered by courier on behalf of the paper shortly after their "cleaned up" version was printed on 21 September 1897.

Virginia's beloved letter (suspected of actually being written by her father -- who is oft-times regarded as the "Founder of the 'Viral Video' of His Day") is known far and wide as one of the most heartfelt and touching dialogues ever printed -- predating "Dear Abby" and paving the way for the popular "Question and Answer" segments featured in countless newspapers and magazines, world-wide.  

This never before disclosed discourse is as follows:

Dear Editor—

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
115 West Ninety Fifth Street

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

Forgive me for being so blunt, but...the fact of the matter is -- there is no Santa Claus.  Your "little friends" are right; your parents have misguided you...and you trusted them.  This parent/child bond is now forever broken and, sadly, one day you will probably need therapy.  And when I say "one day", I mean...you will need years and years of weekly therapy by a trained psychoanalyst, at the unheard of fee of $30.00 per session to rid you of your trust issues. 

Honestly, from this point onward, you will look back and wonder -- while you are lazily gazing out of your classroom's window, years from now -- when you are lying, spent, on your back looking up at the ceiling after a lover's encounter, or tomorrow -- when you are in bed, head under the covers, trying to fall asleep...those thoughts will creep into your mind and you will undoubtedly have flashbacks of various things your parents have assured you about over the years. 

Things such as: 

"Am I really an only child?" 

"The Easter Bunny - another sham to make me behave?" 

"Did my pet goldfish really safely swim out of his bowl to the East River to be reunited with his family that one day when I went to grandma's for tea?" 

"Are there really no monsters under my bed, especially now, because I'm lying wide awake in my bed for hours on end, and...for some inexplicable reason my father and mother always close the door after they shun my requests for a kiss 'goodnight' -- and, would they even hear my muffled cries for help if a monster got me?"

Absolute poppycock and pure hogwash, Virginia!  In fact...chances are that's not even your REAL name.  By that I mean -- yes, it's your name now...but, before you were adopted (and by this abject refusal of affection your "parents" deny you, chances are good you aren't even remotely related to them...or perhaps you are the bastard child of that aunt they never speak of) it was probably something else.  But, it might have been Elsie or Gertrude, so consider yourself lucky, in a way.

Lastly, there are probably no monsters under your bed...but this made up creepy fat guy in a red suit shimmying down your chimney to gain access into your house just to poke around in your sock drawer because he has a stocking fetish...well, let's just say the monsters are the least of your worries, my dear!

In closing, I wish you the best of luck with the rest of your life, trudging onward from this point, being hounded by the press and taunted by your so-called "little friends" up until the day you die -- as I'm going to publish your full name and address in our paper, haha!

Or as "Santa" would say (if he existed, but my dear delusional child...rest assured, as best you can in your bed, late at night -- the very same bed without the monster under it -- he certainly does not) -- "Ho! Ho! Ho!"

-- Regards, F. P. Church, Editor

Scaling Literary Heights and Other Fairy Stories

My totally elegant Soehnle scale.

I just weighed myself and I gained weight. I know I did as I have a swanky scale from one of those Norwegian, Swiss, Swedish or other such Norse-type land where they're typically renown for growing beautiful, lithe women whose skin glows with the dewy innocence of one of those ethereal fairies in that "faked fairy photographs" hoax perpetrated by two little English girls. Those sweet little "innocent" girls, along with the "prim and proper" British doctor who snapped the infamous, but equally fabricated, Loch Ness Monster photograph...admitted years afterwards they duped unsuspecting people whose only fault in life was hoping too much for magical, wondrous things.

Whilst innocence lost is a sad, sad thing...weight loss is another thing altogether.

Anyway, my nifty scale lets me know how much I weigh, how much body fat I have, how much water's in my feet (I guess - as that's the only part that goes ON the scale), and how much muscle I have. It does this all in a couple minutes...going to a doctor to ascertain all this would take hours...and then you'd have to wait for the test results they never tell you about unless they were bad...or they forgot...or they said they called but they didn't as you have caller ID and you know damned well they didn't call at all and "just didn't leave a message" because you weren't there to have it delivered personally.

So, I now weigh a whopping 110.8 pounds.

I can hear that collective sigh of contempt mixed with hatred clear across the Internet here. "One-hundred ten pounds??? Are you insane??? I WISH I weighed 110 pounds!"

But, you don't see my plight. Oh, yeah, I have one. Listen...

...I lost about 15 pounds here in the past year. Of course it comes straight off the boobs...but even without that bit of "too much info" - a person who is tiny to start with doesn't have a lot of room to lose weight. When I got down to about 107 I started to worry...when I got down to 105 I started to freak.

When you weigh a bunch, losing a pound or two or five or ten doesn't necessarily cause a sense of panic... I'm sure it's more like a feeling of elation. When you weigh 107 or 105 you wonder "Just how much more weight CAN I lose before I really have to worry about it?"

So, when I stepped on the scale just now and saw I was almost...almost 111...I felt really good.

You see I've never had to exercise. Never had to jazzercise, never had to aerobocise, yogacise or Tae-Bocise. In fact the only "cise" I do where I think I'm any good at...is criticize.

That I do extremely well. And you can lose a lot of weight doing it...especially if you "worrycise" at the same time.

Mostly I'm critical of my own self...but when I, as a wannabe writer, get a whiff of another "writer's" work, especially when I could have possibly done that work and done that work a LOT better (or at least "quite a bit" better) - I go into criticize mode.

Anyone who fancies themselves a writer knows exactly what I mean. You never read a news article as "just a news article" - you read it as a news article with an inordinate amount of grammatical mistakes. You read all comments below these articles and inwardly complain to yourself, "People who really want to be taken seriously should at LEAST know how to SPELL correctly!" You peruse the book aisles in any massive book store and continually balk and roll your eyes and say extremely naughty words under your breath. You can't conceive of anyone actually making money on something you'd have been embarrassed to show your own mother when you were in third grade...but there they all are, as bright as day. Or day to any vampire who could attest to it in any of those 20,092 books they're selling there that has a vampire as a protagonist or an antagonist or a misogynist. All I know -- is the gist of it...is nearly pure crap...as I could surely do better...

...you know, if I actually tried...or knew someone...or lowered my standards enough.

So, after all my criticism is eventually vented out and all is said and done and I finally drift off to la-la-land in my Ambien-induced coma...I'm hoping the only thing I don't lower, other than my perceived high and mighty literary standards...

...is my weight.

And, I do believe in fairies...I do believe...just like I do believe I'll be a real writer one day.

(Thanks again to my friend, Phil, for planting that "cise" seed in my brain and egging me on to write this after listening to me vent...for the umpteen-millionth time.)