Chords for Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus

[C] _ _ _ A little over a hundred years ago, in [Bb] 1897, a young girl from the Upper West Side of Manhattan
wrote a [C] letter to the editor of the New York Sun, one of New York City's newspapers at
the [Bb] time. _ _
She wrote,
_ [Am] _ _ _ [G] Dear editor, [Am] I am eight years old.
[G] Some of my little friends [Cm] say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says if you see it in [Bb] the sun, it's so.
Please tell me the truth.
_ [Am] Is there a Santa Claus?
[G] Virginia O.
Hanlon, [Am] 115 West 95th [G] Street, New York.
_ [Cm] _
_ _ _ Now that letter [C] wound up on the desk of a newspaper man named [Gm] Frank Church.
_ [C] This is
[Bb] what he [C] replied and printed [F] in the paper [C] that year. _ _ _ _ _
_ Virginia, [F] your little friends are wrong. _
They have been affected by the skepticism [Em] of a
skeptical age.
[D] [G] They do not believe except that which [Dm] they see.
[F] They think [C] nothing can
be which is not [D] comprehensible by their little minds.
_ [G] All minds, Virginia, whether they be
men's or children's, are little.
[C] In this great [Bb] universe of ours, man [F] is a mere insect, an
ant in his [Eb] intellect compared with the boundless world [D] about him.
_ [G] _ [F] _ Yes, Virginia, [C] there is a
Santa Claus.
He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion [Bb] exist, and you
know that they abound and give your life [Dm] its highest beauty and joy.
Alas, [F] how [C] dreary would
the world be if there were no Santa Claus.
[Em] It would be as [Am] dreary as if there were no
[F] Virginians.
There would be [Bb] no childlike faith [G] then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable
this existence.
_ We should have no enjoyment except in sense [Bb] and sight.
The eternal [C] light
with which childhood fills [Dm] the world would be extinguished.
[Em] _
Not [E] believe in Santa Claus.
You might [Am] as well not believe in fairies.
[C] You [Fm] might get your papa to have [Dm] men watch
in all [G] the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus.
But even if you did not see him
come down, what would that prove? _
[C] [F] Nobody sees [C] Santa [Gm] Claus, but that is no sign [C] that there
is no Santa [F] Claus.
[C] The most real things in this world are those that neither [F] children
nor men can see.
Nobody [Am] can conceive [Em] or imagine all [D] the wonders that are [G] unseen [B] and unseeable
in the world.
[C] You tear apart the baby's rattle to see [D] what makes the noise inside.
[G] But there
is a veil covering the unseen world which the strongest men, nor even the united strength
of all [C] the strongest men that ever lived, [F] could tear apart.
_ Only faith, [C]
poetry, [D] love,
[G] romance [F] can push aside that curtain and view [C] and picture the supernal beauty and glory
[G] beyond.
Is it [C] all real?
_ [F] Ah, Virginia, [C] in this [Fm] world there is nothing [C] else real and abiding.
_ No Santa Claus.
Thank God he lives and lives forever.
A thousand years from now, Virginia,
nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of _
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