Syntaxtual Healing

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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.
 - The New York Sun, 1897

The basis for the book, the movie, the Macy's window display of Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus, is one of the few movies I know of based on an actual true story. Well, a true letter, at least, written by an 8-year-old girl named Virginia to the editor of The New York Sun - because if you see it in The Sun, it's so.

While this is a newer movie, I really enjoy it. Probably due to the past few year's Macy's displays. Embracing Virginia's wonderfully crafted pop-up book, the displays were partly a 3D embodiment of the movie, and in part giant pop-up book:

The other part of the story I love is the lesson Virginia gets not from the response in the newspaper, but from her mother:

Believing in Santa isn't something you prove, it's something you do.

This is, in my opinion, exactly what Christmas is about. It's not about decorations or presents, it's about what those things do to those around us. It's about decorations and presents because they help us raise each other's spirits. When your spirits are low, just drive past a house smothered in Christmas lights and tell me they don't make you smile. Think about the look on a loved one's face when they get that special gift - or better yet, think about how you feel when you do something good for someone you might not even know.

Christmas is about doing something that raises someone else's spirits, about embracing the Santa Claus in all of us.