It was almost one hundred and twenty-five years ago that the editors of The New York Sun - on a Tuesday in September no less - answered sweet, little, eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's (she of the 115 West Ninety-Fifth Street O'Hanlon family) question, "Is There a Santa Claus?" in the affirmative.
No one currently living in Gulf Breeze, Florida had yet been born in time to read the editorial in the September 21, 1897 edition of The Sun. It matters not. This year, one hundred and fourteen families have irrefutable proof of his existence. Their proof is in the person of Michael Esmond and his extraordinary benevolence. Mr. Esmond paid the past-due utility bills of one hundred and fourteen families in Gulf Breeze, Florida. But for his action, the City of Gulf Breeze would have shut off their utilities.
It is a sentiment as timeless as the words Francis P. Church used in his September 21, 1897 answer to eight-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon's prayer:
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...
No Santa Claus! Thank GOD!
he lives, and he lives forever.
A thousand years from now,
nay, Virginia, ten times
ten thousand years from now,
he will continue to make glad
the heart of childhood.
-AK
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