Yes, Zoey...

There are things that even though we know that they are fiction, we would so desperately like them to be fact...things like wishing on shooting stars, crossing your fingers for luck, and four leaf clovers...but believing in Santa Claus is something different. It's essential to believing in anything, I think.

"You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing 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 childhood."

Growing up is just about the most tragic thing that we do. You don't have to believe in Santa Claus but you do have to believe in the kind of magic that makes him possible. It's a cold winter if you don't.