Bisbee daily review., 1905-12-28
ID SANTA CLAUS
A Defense of the "Grdnd Old Man" SkeptiCS
 Would Discard

who would have the world -elect the grand old man.
 The world is growing too o:d ard too wise for Santa Claus. It has made up it's mind that i. will have noBC of him" This is a sample of the state ments made by the skeptics of this period.
 New York newspaper sums Jp the arguments made by the enemies of Santa Claus in this way:
 Tt is said that Santa Claus is child ish, that Santa Claus is irreligious, that Santa Claus is a delusion. that Santa Claus is trivial. pagan, mislead- ing to the mind of the child.
 Educators have denied the very existence of Santa Claus and protest ed against the telling of the old Santa Claus stories on the ground that t1ey are all lies.
 "Religionists have attacked him vi olently with the accusation that he is only a pagan myth, and that he abstracts the minds of children from the real meaning and purpose of Christmas.
 The board of education has turned a cold shoulder to him. They have not forbidden him entrance to the schools. but their rules governing Christmas are all against him. They have not legislated to keep him out, but the rules against Christmas trees, the regulations forbidding any relig- ious exercises and the growing pre- judice against school entertainments are all conspiring to force him from the public schools.
 Even the Sunday schools-the last stronghold-have begun to frame up acts of exclusion. Some of the minis ters think that the lesson of the Christmas manager is forgotten in the hope of the Christmas pack. Some of them have made the danger of fire from Christmas trees the apparent reason for excluding him from their Sunday school rooms. Others think that the money expended on the par ish children could better bc distrfbu- ted among the abject poor.
 The truth teIlers have a mighty argument built up to support their contention. They say that when the .sssAass ~sss-ia ss DSs<SH,led Srtses sort of Ioik ShaN one must lie aSSe night to seea-as one does for Santa Claus Gn Christmas Eve-he must grow up under the disadvantage of having at every step to free his mind from a de fusion, an error, a wrong belief.
 They say that the child whose ia, ther or mother has told him that Santa Claus and the fairies really live must, as his knowledge and experi ence increases, gradually grow to dis trust the word of his parents, to be lieve himself deluded by them in other more important facts of life. They say that it is a humiliation for the child 10 find that a deception has been practiced upon him. just as it would for an older person. They say, more over, that it is an insult to the intel ligence of the child to ask him tc place his faith in anything that is not strictly true, and they appeal tc the science of ethics to prove their arguments"
 After presenting in very feeble sort of way the arguments of those who declare that Santa Claus is real" this New York newspaper concludes:
 Put on the whole the truth teilers have the best of it. This is practical age and the tendency is toward bald bare, absolute truth in everything"
 But the truth tellers are certainly not among those who are so "all-fred' practical that they make bold, through Q mistaken notion of duty, to deny the existence of Santa Claus.
 According to this New York news paper the truth tellers" say that when the child's world is peopleC with the sort of folk that one mus lie awake at night to see-as one does Santa Claus on Christmas Eve-ht must grow up under the disadvantage of having at every step to free hi! mind from a deIusion, an error, { wrong belief" Well, the child's world in all the years of Christendom hal been peopled with just that sort O folk; in all the years of Christendon little children on Christmas Eve have showed the sand man" farther ant farther away, and have strained thei little ears in the effort to hear tn, footsteps of the good old Saint who's, existence, as whose coming, they hay, never for moment doubted. Yet dur ing all these years children hay, grown Co manhood and womanhood and they have never found themselve