Shirley Satterfield

Francis Pharcellus Church: Little Virginia’s Secret Journalism Santa

A child’s letter to the editor questioning the existence of Santa Claus challenged the imagination of a crusty old, cynical newspaper writer by the name of Francis Pharcellus Church to answer the child in the affirmative. And although he was too ashamed of himself to admit to authorship of this the world’s most famous editorial of all time, translated into twenty languages, reprinted every Christmas for years, and used over and over again in blockbuster movies about Christmas, who can after all, deny a mere child?

Eight year old Virginia O’Hanlon posed this pressing question to her father’s most trusted newspaper The New York Sun after a most compelling debate about the existence of Santa Claus with her classmates.

“Dear Editor I am eight 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?”

And when the letter crossed the desk of Church’s brother, the editor and chief of the newspaper, he just summarily passed the buck onto his wry, jaded brother Francis much to the man’s chagrin, to which this most esteemed editor of skepticism replied:

September 21, 1897
New York, New York

YES VIRGINIA THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS

VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
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.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
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Thus a ‘Just the facts, maim’ type newspaper reporter made Christmas magic for a child and for all of us for all time (and he put it in writing!).

Kahlil Gibran: America’s Mystical Immigrant

Kahlil Gibran, born on January 6, 1883 in a Lebanese village in the exotic Ottoman Empire, is most famous for his best selling book, :”The Prophet. It was a popular book full of philosophical prose poetry and mystical illustrations of nude people which has been translated into 100 languages and over the decades since it was first written in 1923 has sold one million copies.

Gibran was a Lebanese immigrant living in Boston who considered himself to more of an artist than he did a writer, and not a philosopher at all. His father had been a tax collector for the Ottoman Empire but was imprisoned for embezzlement, so his mother moved the now impoverished family to America. She supported her family by working as a seamstress and by selling lace and linens door to door. Gibran went to school in Boston where he was recognized as a creative early in life and was introduced to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day by a teacher. But his mother decided to send him back to Lebanon to attend school at age 15 so he would not lose touch with his culture. The family were members of the Maronite church, the Eastern Orthodox arm of the Roman Catholic Church and is fully recognized by the Pope. But after the death of his mother. And the deaths of his sister and half brother which followed, Gibran returned to Boston where he was supported by his surviving sister who was also a seamstress.

His art was eventually recognized in a showing at Day’s studio in Boston where he met Mary Haskell who would become his financial benefactress and close lifelong friend, although it is unknown whether or not they were also lovers. He wrote his first book in Arabic and a second book entitled “The Madman”, and Mary Haskell sent him to France to study art. However, his art went acclaimed by the art critics of the day. But his last book “The Prophet” would become popular with the masses for both the writing and the illustrations in the book. Religiously, Gibran was not only influenced by Maronite Christianity but also by the Sufism, a highly spiritual form of Islam with a focus on the inner life of a worshiper and asceticism as opposed to the more prosperous and worldly form of Islam that we know today. But later in life he would become a follower of Baha’i-La, a religion that believes all the world’s religions should unify. Gibran believed in reincarnation.

The main character of Gibran’s most famous book, Al Mustafa, had been living in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and was about to leave with the stopped him to hear some parting words of wisdom from him, So “The Prophet” teaches them one more time in a long speech about the human condition and the issues of life such as love, marriage, children, beauty, and death, and is rich in symbolism.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“When love beckons you to follow him, those his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

“Your children are not your children. They are the son’s and daughters of life longing for itself.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gibran died on April 10, 1931 in New York City but was buried in his home village of Bsharri in Lebanon and is considered to be Lebanon’s foremost modern writer.

Kahlil Gibran, born on January 6, 1883 in a Lebanese village in the exotic Ottoman Empire, is most famous for his best selling book, :”The Prophet. It was a popular book full of philosophical prose poetry and mystical illustrations of nude people which has been translated into 100 languages and over the decades since it was first written in 1923 has sold one million copies.

Gibran was a Lebanese immigrant living in Boston who considered himself to more of an artist than he did a writer, and not a philosopher at all. His father had been a tax collector for the Ottoman Empire but was imprisoned for embezzlement, so his mother moved the now impoverished family to America. She supported her family by working as a seamstress and by selling lace and linens door to door. Gibran went to school in Boston where he was recognized as a creative early in life and was introduced to photographer and publisher F. Holland Day by a teacher. But his mother decided to send him back to Lebanon to attend school at age 15 so he would not lose touch with his culture. The family were members of the Maronite church, the Eastern Orthodox arm of the Roman Catholic Church and is fully recognized by the Pope. But after the death of his mother. And the deaths of his sister and half brother which followed, Gibran returned to Boston where he was supported by his surviving sister who was also a seamstress.

His art was eventually recognized in a showing at Day’s studio in Boston where he met Mary Haskell who would become his financial benefactress and close lifelong friend, although it is unknown whether or not they were also lovers. He wrote his first book in Arabic and a second book entitled “The Madman”, and Mary Haskell sent him to France to study art. However, his art went acclaimed by the art critics of the day. But his last book “The Prophet” would become popular with the masses for both the writing and the illustrations in the book. Religiously, Gibran was not only influenced by Maronite Christianity but also by the Sufism, a highly spiritual form of Islam with a focus on the inner life of a worshiper and asceticism as opposed to the more prosperous and worldly form of Islam that we know today. But later in life he would become a follower of Baha’i-La, a religion that believes all the world’s religions should unify. Gibran believed in reincarnation.

The main character of Gibran’s most famous book, Al Mustafa, had been living in the city of Orphalese for 12 years and was about to leave with the stopped him to hear some parting words of wisdom from him, So “The Prophet” teaches them one more time in a long speech about the human condition and the issues of life such as love, marriage, children, beauty, and death, and is rich in symbolism.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

“When love beckons you to follow him, those his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

“Your children are not your children. They are the son’s and daughters of life longing for itself.”

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Gibran died on April 10, 1931 in New York City but was buried in his home village of Bsharri in Lebanon and is considered to be Lebanon’s foremost modern writer.

Oscar Wilde: Flamboyance Personified

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, born on October 16 in 1854, was not just famous for his long name and writings which were shocking in his Victorian times, he was also known for his fussy attention to his personal appearance and his propensity for the finer things in life, In short, he was a dandy.

A dandy is defined is defined as a man who is extraordinarily fussy about his appearance and who seeks out the finer luxuries of life in the exclusive men’s clubs of London. So, although Wilde was born in Ireland to a noble family of Irish intellectuals, he moved to London shortly after graduation from college to seek out the high life in London’s elite men’s clubs.

And it was in London where he became famous for his plays, his poetry, and his one and only wildly popular Victorian novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”, a book whose main character was also a dandy. Therefore, the critics cited Wilde as being too decadent and immoral in his writings, but since Wilde was of the Aesthetic Movement in art believing in “art for art’s sake” and the amoral nature of art and beauty, and that the mores of the should have no bearing on art for arts sake, But criticism not withstanding his most famous play “The Importance of Being Earnest, a comedy about the follies of the upper classes, was a long running play in London, and Wilde prospered as a writer.

However his life took a dark turn when he sued the marquess of Queensbury, who was the father of his male lover Lord Alfred Douglas, for criminal libel. But he lost in court and was himself subsequently convicted of performing homosexual acts and sent to prison for a span of two years, And it was there that Wilde discovered his affinity for Jesus and converted to Catholicism and wrote a lengthy letter about his suffering in prison which wasn’t published until after his death. After his release from prison Wilde moved permanently to France where he lived the rest of his life as an ex-patriot. He could speak fluently in both the French and German languages.

He was also an expert in classic, and in addition to his blockbuster plays, his decadence and his famous novel, Wilde was also known for his dry wit as displayed in these famous quotes by him.

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Be yourself, everyone else is taken.

I can resist everything except temptation.

We are all in the gutter, but some us us are looking at the stars.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

To liveis the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

I have nothing to declare but my genius.

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Oscar Wilde died at the young age of 46 of meningitis as a complication of aninfection following ear surgery in France, when ironically his own father was an accomplished ear and throat surgeon in Ireland.. He is buried in Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris where his gravestone is regularly decorated with lipstick by his still adoring fans.

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Modern Prose Poetry Bends the Rules

There are definite difference between poetry and prose. Poetry is written in verse form and relies on picturesque speech, metaphor, imagery, can bend the rules of grammar, and has line breaks in verse form that define it as poetry. Prose on the other hand is always written with regular grammar and punctuation, does not necessarily rely on flowery speech, is written in paragraph form, and has no line breaks in order for it to be defined as prose.

However, there have been through history certain innovative poets who have thrown out the poetry rule book altogether, starting with Japan’s star haiku poet of the 17th Matsuo Basho, He artfully combine the elements of traditional haiku with prose to create a new form of poetry called haibun. This new form of of Japanese poetry also included biographical in formation about the poet himself when ancient poetry was historically written about the myths, heroes and epic stoies of the nation, as exemplified by the Greeks.

In more modern times prose poetry has become a combination of the two forms of writing, prose and poetry and became especially popular in France during the 18th century, as a reaction to all the strict rules of form that was historically employed by French poets. This gave Western poets a new sense of artistic freedom that endures in our free-verse poetry today. In the 19th century Irish Poet Oscar Wilde adopted this form of poetry, however, with the modernist movement cam dissent with such heavy weight poets as T,S, Eliot speaking against it; thus poetry in verse form became apropos again.

In America, Walt Whitman used this during the mid 19th century and is by and large considered to be the American Father of Free-Verse Poetry. And with the advent of the hippy movement of the 20th century prose poetry became popular again in the highly popular coffee houses of the time through the likes of Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsburg,

Today’s prose poetry still uses such literary devices as simile and metaphor, repetition, and loose rhyme and approximate rhyme schemes, they are always written in paragraph form and boast of no line breaks as in this example by prose poet, Amy Lowell.

      Bath

  The day is fresh-washed and fair, and there is a smell of tulips and narcissus in the air.
  The sunshine pours in at the bath-room window and bores through the water in the bath-tub in lathes and planes of greenish-white. It cleaves the water into flaws like a jewel, and cracks it to bright light.
  Little spots of sunshine lie on the surface of the water and dance, dance, and their reflections wobble deliciously over the ceiling; a stir of my finger sets them whirring, reeling. I move a foot, and the planes of light in the water jar. I lie back and laugh, and let the green-white water, the sun-flawed beryl water, flow over me. The day is almost too bright to bear, the green water covers me from the too bright day. I will lie here awhile and play with the water and the sun spots.
  The sky is blue and high. A crow flaps by the window, and there is a whiff of tulips and narcissus in the air.

Next week we will explore the poetry of Oscar Wilde. Sign up for dailywisdomwords,com for poetry prompts, book reviews, and more great content like this.