Tonight, somewhere in Maryland, there sleeps a little five year old girl named Keirstin who's family Christmas tree fell over yesterday breaking one of her four precious Snowbabies ornaments and leaving her broken-hearted and teary-eyed. Her dad took to the internet last night in search of a replacement. I heard of the story when Keirstin's dad emailed me at the suggestion of a friend.

Keirstin ... you shall have a new snowbaby just like the one that broke. And dad ... you shall not pay me one red cent despite your insistence. For tonight will bring us Christmas, and my gift to Keirstin will bring me joy. Please allow me this pleasure ... and thank you for your offer to pay for the snowbaby ... but I need the joy much more than the price of a snowbaby.

And for the rest of you, my friends ... I borrow, and give to you, those beautiful and timeless words first published in The New York Sun in December, 1897. Because many of us have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. Because many do not believe except they see and think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.

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 Keirstins. 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 external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.