It seems a substitute music teacher in Lebanon, PA decided in all good conscience that she could not let impressionable, young children continue to believe in Santa Claus. So, while reading the poem, "A Visit From Santa Claus," she came to a screeching stop and announced that Santa does not exist. That's kinda like offering an impressionable, young child a candy cane and then slapping him upside the head.
“The poem has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It’s a story. I taught it as a story. There’s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.” Farrisi doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, and she doesn’t think anyone else should, either. She made her feelings clear to the classroom full of 6- and 7-year-olds, some of whom went home crying.What gray, soulless, empty, humorless people she and her ilk are. There is no Santa, there is no God, there is no faith, there is no joy, there is no hope, there is only racism and war and corporate greed and poverty and injustice. And they can't keep their misery to themselves, they have to spread it around. If they believe or disbelieve something, then everyone else should be made to believe or disbelieve the same thing. And they deride evangelists! This woman should have nothing to do with children for the rest of her life, whether it be as a teacher or a parent or a babysitter. I'd suggest Ms. Farrisi read the following, but I know it would leave her cold and clueless.
If you see the not so subtle religious message in this letter, you get extra points.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
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except 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.
2 comments:
No wonder Americans find it difficult to accept reality when they grow up! I kid, I kid.
But seriously, what is a person to do if a child comes up and asks whether Santa Claus exists and whether he comes down the chimney to leave gifts? It's so difficult, as it is, to teach children the difference between reality and make-believe, why would you complicate things by selectively promoting lies? Santa exists but Harry Potter is just fiction?
You shouldn't be having that conversation with anyone except your own kids. That's for their parents to deal with. As for your own kids, I don't remember my parents worrying about messing up my mind or my morals by telling me that Santa was real. I think I turned out ok, as have dozens of generations before me. I dress up as Santa every year, put down the top on my convertable and drive once around the Beltway circling Washington, DC. I get hundreds of smiles, waves and shouts from ADULTS who are happy to see Santa. Kids grow up and someday abandon childhood myths with perfect ease. They aren't crippled by being "lied" to. But they still retain some of that joy in the back of their mind for the rest of their life. It's wonderful to see and to experience yourself when you see a Santa. I see nothing wrong with that. People who think that passing on the timeless story of Santa Claus is selectively promoting lies, need to lighten up.
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