Should Santa Claus be abolished?

That’s a simple, straightforward question, but when the editors of the Lewiston Evening Journal asked a number of learned men in the L-A area for their thoughts and advice well over 100 years ago, they got a flood of responses. The letters filled more than five full pages in a holiday supplement to the newspaper’s Dec. 23, 1897, edition.

Early in the month, a letter sent to local church and social organization leaders said, “A Maine school teacher has recently warned her pupils that there is no Santa Claus and has told them that it is wrong to believe in the story.”

The editors asked for letters of 200 to 500 words on the following question: “Is it advisable to continue the myth?”

This took place just three months after publication of The (New York) Sun’s famous editorial in which Charles A. Dana replied to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s query with the ageless assurance, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” Dana’s reply had swept the world, and in some cases, provoked philosophical and theological debate.

In the five-plus pages printed in the Lewiston newspaper at Christmastime of 1897, Maine writers mounted a strong defense of Santa Claus. 

One of the letters came from the Rev. George M. Howe, pastor of the Pine Street Congregational Church in Lewiston. He wrote, “All things being considered, I do not think we are quite ready to give up old Santa, so dear to the hearts of little children, nor do we, if we make proper explanations to them concerning him. No, Mr. Editor, let us retain Santa Claus in our homes for the sake of the children who take such genuine delight in the pleasing myth at the glad Christmas-tide.”

The Rev. Robert D. Towne of the Bates Street Universalist Church in Lewiston wrote that he feels he could never agree on any subject with the teacher who warned her students about Santa. “It gives me the cold chills to think what a practical person she must be, while I believe in the glory of the imagination, even the myth and fable,” Towne said. “And what if Santa Claus is true? Maybe all the winds and tides, the days and nights, heat and frost like fleet-footed reindeer are, after all, bringing good gifts to our children and to us all,” he added.

The Rev. Asaph J. Wheeler, pastor of the Turner Street Advent Church in Auburn, offered the following defense of Saint Nicholas.

“Hypercritical, indeed, must be the person who would rob childhood of this angel of the winter season. As long as babies are born, let his annual visits be recognized and applauded by every parent,” he said. “Until all hyperbole shall be expunged from our words, deeds and teaching, let us hold on to this good old liberal character, against whose name more beneficences have been recorded than all the philanthropists of the universe.

“Give childhood its chief joy — the advent of Santa Claus,” Wheeler wrote. “The myth blesses homes with joy, stimulates commerce in the winter season, increases friendships among the people and harms no one. Let us, therefore, hold on to it a while longer.”

And the Rev. John Kimball, pastor of the Universalist Church at Turner, wrote, “Is it right to be a child? Should there be youthful imaginations and love for the marvelous? Should daydreams and castles in the air be abolished by courts and puritanic elders? Should young life he held to narrow limits? Should innocent little children be born with old and shriveled up souls, that know nothing of romance and delight only in dry facts?

“I believe the memories of childhood are sweeter to the child who has been brought up in an atmosphere where such a being as Santa Claus could live than are memories to the child who has been reared in so chill an atmosphere that even the idea of Santa Claus has frozen to death,“ Kimball said.

The letters also came to the Journal from Bangor, Westbrook, Portland and Saco. They were penned by college presidents and leaders of religion and education. Not all praised St. Nick. Some voiced criticism of deceiving children.

In Kimball’s view, “The idea of Santa Claus is no falsehood, but a grand truth.”

Here’s Kimball’s wrap-up on the whole debate.

“The people who are afraid to allow the child a fiction, however innocent, may be good people . . . but I would rather they were somebody else’s father and mother than mine. Wouldn’t you?”

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].