Sir, – The power and impact of letter writing, electronically or manually delivered, continues to have an impact on our world, especially on important events or sad occasions. Letters of appeal, condolence or invitation are so personally important.
Consider the famous letters written that have changed or influenced history.
One such correspondence is by an eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon in 1897 to the New York Sun newspaper, on the advice of her father, because she was saddened by remarks of her schoolfriends that there was no Santa Claus. The wonderful reply a few days later by Francis Church, a journalist with that same newspaper, still holds today. “Thank God he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood,” replied the New York Sun. Yes, Santa lives.
What is not widely known is that same Virginia O’Hanlon went on to become a prolific educator receiving thousands of letters up to her passing in 1971. Her simple letter moved a national newspaper to influence the world of its readers in many countries that Santa Claus truly exists, especially in the hearts of children as long as they are allowed to dream and hope.
Matt Williams: Take a deep breath and see how Sam Prendergast copes with big Fiji test
New Irish citizens: ‘I hear the racist and xenophobic slurs on the streets. Everything is blamed on immigrants’
Jack Reynor: ‘We were in two minds between eloping or going the whole hog but we got married in Wicklow with about 220 people’
‘I could have gone to California. At this rate, I probably would have raised about half a billion dollars’
As Edward Bulwer-Lytton says, a simple pen and paper is mightier than the sword.
This coming week when Santa starts that journey of dreams, let us all hope that peace accompanies his visit. – Yours, etc,
THOMAS MORRIS GORMALLY,
Co Kildare.