AU journalism professor W. Joseph Campbell recently won the American Journalism Historian Association's top faculty research award for his work on the editorial "Is There a Santa Claus?"
He presented his 20-page paper on Oct. 23 in Cleveland at the organization's annual conference. His work is part of a larger project that he hopes to turn into a book on the importance of the year 1897, which he describes as "a pivotal time in news media, especially print media."
Campbell said the award was "quite flattering and a pleasant surprise." He won the same award five years ago for a paper that became a chapter in his book "Yellow Journalism."
The paper focused on the editorial published by the New York Sun every year at Christmastime and was a response to a letter from 8-year-old Virginia O'Hanlon asking, "Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santa Claus?"
Writer Francis P. Church responded, "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."
This answer was first published in September 1897 and was an instant success. Campbell says the Sun only published it sporadically in the first few years, and it was only in the 1920s that it began to make a regular occurrence during the Christmas season.
"It was the readers' insistence and fondness for this editorial that kept it alive," Campbell said, adding that hundreds and thousands of people would write to the paper asking for it to be reprinted.
Church died in 1906 and never saw what a success his work became.
The Sun kept publishing Church's response until it went out of business in 1950. Other news sources continue to reprint it today.
Campbell said he isn't sure what it is about the editorial that people liked so much.
"I think it's the way it was written," Campbell said. "It addresses a timeless question in an imaginative way."
He added that throughout the years, parents have been able to read this editorial to their children when they are asked if there is a Santa Claus, so the piece has a very practical use.
The imagination of this unusual response comes out in lines of the editorial such as these: "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."
Campbell says the timing of the piece is also unusual. It was published in September, apparently because the girl who wrote the letter had just had her birthday and was wondering about Christmas presents.
