Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus revisited

Been working on this project for a while, putting off ‘going public’ until I had everthing perfect. Well, I don’t have everything perfect but it’s time it saw the light of day. So here it is, the project I mentioned in this blog post, and taken to this point with the help of kind assistance of these lovely people, who helped enormously. Thanks again you guys.

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111 years ago, an 8 year old child wrote a letter to the editor the New York Sun asking a very simple and direct question.

“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”

The response published by the newspaper was wonderful and uplifting, answering an innocent child’s question in an imaginative way. It has become the most reprinted newspaper editorial in history. This extract gives a flavour of that answer:

“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.”

Now, 111 years later, you are being asked to answer the earnest questions of children from around the world in a similarly imaginative way.

This time, the children aren’t asking if there is a Santa Claus. They didn’t send their questions to the editor of the New York Sun. They asked God the questions and a new website has been set up to allow you to put yourself in God’s shoes in support of the Children’s Sunshine Home and the fundraising effort to build Ireland’s first children’s hospice.

Everyone, believer and non and in between, is asked to visit What Would God Say? and answer some questions that Children have asked of God. The questions are all taken from the book ‘Dear God’ by Carmel Reilly. Each one is a genuine question a child somewhere in the world has asked of God. They ranging from the difficult ones such as “Why do people die” to really difficult ones such as “Why we have cauliflower”!.

All that is required to take part is a good imagination and an open heart to enter into the spirit of the children’s questions, just like the New York Sun did in answering Virginia’s question 111 years ago.

The best answers received via the website will then be published on a set of postcards going on sale early in 2009. All of the proceeds from the sale of the cards will go to the Children’s Sunshine Home, an extremely worthy cause.

Click on over What Would God Say? to take part in this really unique project. Today’s Virginia’s are waiting for your answer…