This year the Winni Players Community Theatre staged "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus." The Winni stage is set up as an old-fashioned radio studio with actors seated in a circle, stepping forward to microphones to read from a script as required. Behind them is the control room, and the sound effects man, called a foley artist in the trade, is over to the left with all the equipment he needs to produce the sounds called for.
An Irish immigrant, James O'Hanlon, is out of work, his 8-year-old daughter Virginia's friends are saying there's no Santa Claus, and Christmas isn't promising to be a happy time for the family. I'm not sure what's fact and what's fiction in this play, but Frank Church is described by his editor, Ed Mitchell, as one of the greatest newspapermen his paper, or any other, has known. But Church's wife and newborn daughter have died and in his grief he has taken to drink and has barely been saved from suicide by Mitchell, who has an "important assignment" for him.
This important assignment is to write an editorial in answer to Virginia O'Hanlon's question about the existence of Santa Claus, because her father, James, told her "if it's in the Sun, it's true." At first, Church thinks this must be a joke, but he rises to the task. His editorial, unsigned, ran on Page 1 of the Sun, and now, more than one hundred years later, it's one of the best-known editorials ever written.
Margaret Lundberg directed this presentation and selected the music, Liz Rohdenburg designed the costumes and Winni artistic director Neil Pankhurst was the sound and lighting designer. Virginia was played by Laconia High School freshman Morgan Mitchell, Dave Rogers appeared as Frank Church and other characters, Pat Kelly was Sun editor Ed Mitchell and other characters. The rest of the cast was rounded out by Kelly Bennett, Lore Briere, Sam Ducharme, Stephen Hird and Mary Rogers. Michael G. Baker was the foley artist, Jim Gocha the announcer. If my count is correct, eight actors played a total of forty-two characters. Quite an achievement!
My holiday spirit needed a jump start after a year and a half of isolation. Thank you, Winni Players, for restoring my hope for a better future with this excellent, heart-warming production. A Google search will find dozens of copies of the complete text of Church's editorial. I hope I'm not violating any copyright laws by including my favorite paragraph here:
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. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
—Francis Pharcellus Church
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