The citizen-Republican. (Scotland, Bon Homme County, S.D.) 1???-19??, 1914-12-24
Is There Room For Santa
Claus in the Present Chimney?

I into automatons. or stuffed dolls. Yet
this is what they would become-mere
little Dry-as-Dusts If no food for the
imagination We're supplied In their
training. The child receives the SAINT
Claus myth with the same simplicity
as did his far away ancestors their
sun myths and noon myths n wind
myths and he grows away from 1t or
grows through it to its deeper meaning
In the same fashion. He takes years
thing signified, and they look centuries.
That is all the difference, and the pro-
cess Is as unconscious in the one case
as in the other.
The parents of little Dry-as-Dust
would say in explanation of their re-
fusal to introduce him to Santa Claus
that they wished him to know nothing
but facts, but here IN in a very
delicate question, for who shall decide
just what constitutes a fact? George
Macdonald says, you know, Fact, at
best, is but a garment of truth, which
has 10000 changes of raiment woven
in the same loom" and in the opinion
of most of us there is no fact in the
universe quite so hearty, so CHEEKY, so
kindly, so saturated with love as our
jolly old Santa Claus with his rosy
cheeks and his snow white beard. Alas
for the child who does not know of
him n has never sighed with delight
as he listened to the charmed words:
Twas the night before Christmas.
when all through the house,
Not a creature was stirring, not even q
mouse"
Who would fear to introduce such a
figure to the child; who would not fear
on the contrary, lest he should fail to
hear of him, lest he should miss the
influence of the innocent mirth, the
kindly charity, the friendly good will
that wrap the saint round about.
He ic tho sion DnG CUrnhpl Of the
joyous time, q reminder that as the
greatest gift to the world came to us
on Christmas day SO we should re-
member 1t by giving to others what
they lack.
Parents are sometimes said to fear
that as the child grows up and dis
covers that Santa Claus is only a myth,
so he may come to suspect hat his re-
ligion teaching has been a sham and
his God q hollow mockery, but this
would seem, in q normal child, to be a
possibility so remote as to be unworthy
Of consideration, while the kind of re-
liglous teaching it p~resupposes would
end in chaos, sooner or later, in any
event. Does this little girl cease to
believe in maternal owe because she
realizes by and by that the doll she
cherished was not a thing of flesh and
blood? Is the grown ma less a soldier
because he really felt himself a war
rior bold when he marched a gallant
~5-year-old, with a paper cap on his
hand a broomstick for a gun?
No, we forget that the child in his
rapid growth, relives all the stages
through which the race has passed and
that he is SO made that he receives the
myth, The fairy tale, the play, the make
believe, absorbs from them what Is
necessary to his mental development,
rejects the nonessential and is nourish-
ed by the meat his fathers fed on.
Tfn1Ea fpn-,, ti,,, I;,- y.,to C1o,.-n
Then you must also take his Snow
White, his Three Bears, his Jack-the-
Giant-Killer and his Cinderella and
you may well dread the
of such a robbery.
You remember what the inspired
Wordsworth said about these things in
The P~relude2"
oh! Give me once again the wishing
cap
OF Fortunatus and the invisible coat
or Jack the Giant Killer, Robin Hood,
And Sabra In the forest with Saint
The child, whose love is here, at least
doth reap
One precious gain, that he forgets him
self"
Let him forget himself then, let him
wander In that enchanted forest where
courage and loyalty always win, where
right Is always might, where the wick
ed are always discounted and the good
victorious and SO in tho atmosphere of
ralth and Innocence which is proper to
childhood. grow strong against the day
when he shall be tried in the conest
of life,
Is there room for Santa Claus in the
present chimney? If there be not, then I
say with Cynthia and say 1t with cour-
age of conviction.
II there be not, then let's pull 1t
down and build a bigger one!"