Editorial writers have to grapple with many great questions, but few are so potentially difficult as the one that faced editors at the New York Sun in 1897. The problem was precipitated by an eight-year-old reader called Virginia McKenna, who wrote to the paper asking: "Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?" The response was to become nearly as celebrated as Christmas itself; indeed it was reprinted annually until 1949, when the Sun was finally eclipsed.
Fortunately, the task of writing the Santa editorial was given to Francis Church, the theology-minded son of a Baptist minister. Editorial offices are staffed by experts from all the major news disciplines, but in the wrong hands the "Virginia" article could have been a disaster.
A leader writer with political expertise might have ventured that, while the basis for there being a Santa Claus certainly existed, it would require a lot of good faith on all sides to make it work. In the meantime, tension was mounting among the elves in advance of the traditional December 25th celebrations, etc, etc. The economic experts could have been a worse choice. They might have grudgingly admitted that there was a Santa, but voiced concern that he would be coming down the chimney of an already overheated economy. There might be warnings that Rudolph and his team were in for a "hard landing"; calls for wage restraint in the elf sector, and so on.
But the Sun picked the right man for the job. "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus," Church famously replied. He wrote: "Santa 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 the world be 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 external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguish ed."
Fine stuff, and typical of the high-mindedness which marks editorial writers apart from those of us who work the grubby coal face of daily news. I'll come back to editorials, but speaking of daily news, I need to make a seemingly casual but in fact carefully calculated digression at this point on the subject of two recent assignments.
This week featured the longest nights of the year, as you know, and from a purely personal point of view, none was longer than last Sunday's, when I had to cover an eight-hour crisis meeting at City Hall. The council had until midnight to strike the 2001 estimate or else face dissolution. In a triumph of optimism over experience, I turned up at 5 p.m. The crux was refuse collection: the city manager wanted a service charge for the new recycling system, but the refuseniks (as it were) wouldn't have it. Various compromises were rejected. On legal advice, the Lord Mayor ruled out a last-minute motion that might have passed. Finally the clock struck midnight. The council chamber turned back into a pumpkin, and I was in such a hurry to get out I tripped over Cinderella on the stairs.
On Tuesday I had to cover a more uplifting event: the annual presentation to a Dublin children's hospital of toys made by offenders who chose community service over prison. The occasion provided a nice illustration of the principle of recycling. The wooden toys had been made from old school desks; but on a more profound level, the harm originally done to society by the toy makers was also being recycled, into good.
You're probably thinking this is just the sort of observation that marks me out as a potential editorial writer. I'm too modest to agree with you, but it's funny you should mention it. Because on foot of my report that both Santa Claus and the Lord Mayor would be visiting the hospital as usual this weekend, an imaginary eight-year-old named Veronica has written to me asking: "Please tell me the truth. Is there a Lord Mayor?"
This is a tricky one. The simple answer would be: "Yes, Veronica, there is a Lord Mayor." Unfortunately, there may not be for much longer. They've been given more time to agree, but councillors were still predicting dissolution at time of going to press. I've checked with City Hall, and if the council goes, so does the mayor. It happened before and they were out for years.
The mayor's role is a largely ceremonial one, of course, and the incumbent is possibly best known for being a brother of Bertie Ahern (who's been up more trees in north Dublin than Santa's been down chimneys). His powers are fairly limited. He certainly has little to do with the "external light" that fills the world, which in Dublin, as in the rest of Ireland, is generated jointly by childhood and the ESB. Still, Veronica's question is a difficult one. I think I'll let the editorial people deal with it. They'll know the right words.
fmcnally@irish-times.ie
