YES, VIRGINIA

YES, VIRGINIA
EDITOR'S NOTE: The following editorial, among the most famous ever written, appeared in The New York Sun in 1897 and remains appropriate for this holiday season 105 years later.
IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?
We take 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 the 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 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 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 life 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 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 may 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, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural 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, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
POLICE AT RISK
Detroit Free Press: From the Department of Disturbing Trends comes a report that violence against police officers in the United States is on the upswing. FBI statistics show 70 law enforcement officers were slain on duty across the country in 2001, a 37 percent increase from 2000 and the highest one-year toll since 1997. The numbers do not include the 72 officers who lost their lives in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which would really throw the statistics out of whack.
Big jump
Even so, the increase in police killings far outpaced the overall jump in homicides for the nation last year, again excepting the Sept. 11 toll.
In a year when civilian law enforcement was generally thought to have been elevated in public esteem by the terrorist attacks, the FBI report also shows 57,000 police officers were assaulted in the course of their public service.
What's happening here?
One easy answer is the availability of firearms. All but nine of the police killings involved a gun, most of them handguns. But it still takes a person to pull the trigger, and the numbers indicate there's less hesitation about doing so where police are concerned. The uniform isn't much of a shield.
The FBI report, compiled from almost 10,000 police agencies, found that two-thirds of the people involved in assaults on officers had criminal records. Experience obviously did not deter them from further trouble.
Lawlessness
This could be just a one-year blip that will disappear in the next set of numbers. Or there may be something more profound in play, a creeping breakdown in respect for the law, fed by pop culture that still presents violence with style and dehumanizes police into anonymous, expendable first responders.