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Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2003 - 3:47 p.m.

Yes, Commonwealth, there is a Santa Claus

There's no stronger feeling of buyer's remorse than when you buy a CD mainly for one song and then find out a few hours later (after you've already opened it) that the song for which you targeted that CD appears on another recently purchased disc, but you just hadn't realized it yet. I suppose the lesson is I should listen to what I've just bought before I go back to any music stores. I did manage to peel off the sticker without tearing it, so I might be able to return it. At the very least, I could sell it as a brand new item on Half.com (with full disclosure, of course). Actually, at the very very least, I could give it to my parents. They'll like it.

But the bottom line is I now have The Drifters singing "White Christmas" (you know, the "do-do-d-do-do" version used in Home Alone).

Argh. I'm hungry. Time for lunch when your co-workers on the other side of the cubicle wall start smelling up the place with pleasant lunches of their own. That, and the one girl with the god-awful annoying, nasally, slow-talking voice -- like Janice from Friends were modeled after her -- won't shut up and it's grating. As in, I'd prefer rubbing my ear up against a cheese grater to listening to her drone on and on about how she once won 80 bucks in Vegas.

* * *

They're like snowflakes!

So I was invited out to lunch with a few people and three of us went in one car and met the fourth person there and on both the ride there and back talked a bit about how she can be annoying sometimes and in some ways, that's not me. But we laughed.

I'm out of here shortly. I did a spot of work today, so that's good. I'll go home and pack the car and then watch TV or play Xbox until Casey gets home and we'll head down to Little Silver to go out with Matt and Denise and several others and basically start the Christmas revelry. Then tomorrow, it's on to Johnstown.

* * *

Here's a bit of holiday cheer. Click here for a bit of the backstory.

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

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

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical 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 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 eternal light 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 they 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 man that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, 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 he lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

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