I've always been the type who believes in good,
that it exists, that it matters, that good can win. 

This past week I lost faith in that. 

And then...
there were those people who brought dogs to cheer children and 
others who brought blankets to warm those standing out in 
the cold as the President spoke,
and the person who called the coffee shop this week to say, ` Please buy a 
cup of coffee for everyone who comes in to your shop today, on me' 
and there were the students and teachers in a nearby town who 
made a green and white paper chain `link of love' with lines 
of hope and support to string along the walls of the new school -
so much kindness from each corner of the world.      

I thought about that burly man in the red coat and cap who we search 
for in the skies, year after year, still hoping. And sure enough, in 
the midst of the saddest days in our state, he is here. 

As newsman Francis Church wrote to Virginia O'Hanlon in 
The New York Sun when her own young faith was tested 
in a different way, 

 "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...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."