A Tsunami Advisory has been issued for the coastal regions of California, as well as the Washington and Oregon coast. This is an advisory only, precautions should be taken for higher than normal surf conditions along the coast.
With the onset of wet damp and snowy weather, added by the disruption to the electrical grid due to storm damage. The County of Calaveras OES has opened warming centers in the following locations
Arnold Independence Hall 1445 Blagen Road Arnold 3pm to 8pm
West Point Community Hall: 22283 Highway 26, West Point, 3pm-8pm
Warming Center and Shelters:
Murphys Fire District Training Center 58 Jones Street Murphys. Open 3pm
Due to the severity of the weather and difficulty in traveling in the mountainous regions, the Club Breakfast slated for the Murphys Hotel has been cancelled. The Breakfast will again be in February on the first Saturday of the month.
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 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
Virginia O’ HanlonFrances Plarcellus Church editor of The New York Sun
A favorite of the Holiday season a letter written by Virginia O’ Hanlon to the editor of The New York Sun, and his published reply to her September 21, 1897
