ShawneeDispatch.com

Precious few things in this life feel so right as having the grandchildren around at Christmastime.

I may be tempting fate to write this, but I’m not sure there is such a thing as a bad Christmas. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad Christmas. Oh, I’ve had some that were better than others, but even the least of them were still pretty fine. I think a bad Christmas would have to be the ultimate oxymoron.

But still, having the grandchildren around at Christmastime just makes the holiday immeasurably brighter and better.

We adults have feelings, of course, but we’ve learned over time to keep them pretty much in check. Thank heaven our children have not yet developed that facility. It’s easy to see what they’re feeling; you can hear it, usually, in the timbre of their enthralled voices.

Jonas, our youngest grandchild, arrived with his parents late the other night. They’ll be with us until after Christmas.

Jonas is 2 1/2, and I’m not sure he really understands Christmas yet. Oh, I think he understands getting presents, all right. As far as he’s concerned, each new discovery is a present. But I’m afraid his understanding of the concept of presents and Santa Claus and the spirit of Christmas is sometime in the future.

Christmas brings out the kid in all of us. I can’t think of anyone who ever said it better than Francis P. Church, who wrote his famous editorial in response to the question from 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon, whose little friends told her there was no Santa Claus.

“VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong,” he wrote. “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 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 eternal 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 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 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, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”

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