Thursday Things: Christmas Eve Edition
24 December 2020. Vol 2 No 52 By Dan McGirt. #72
Welcome to Thursday Things! This Christmas Eve, I wish all Happy Subscribers a joyful and merry Christmas!
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash
Getting it right about a legendary newspaper editorial
The timeless paean to childhood and the Christmas spirit, published in 1897 in the old New York Sun, long ago became the single best-known, most-reprinted editorial in American journalism.
The editorial (see image nearby) was published September 21, 1897, beneath the single-column headline, “Is There A Santa Claus?” Its title was not “Yes, Virginia, There Is A Santa Claus” (as a commentary several years ago in the Tampa Bay Times maintained; that commentary, incidentally, began by asserting: “Good reporters have always checked things out”).
The phrase, “Yes, Virginia,” introduces the 1897 editorial’s most memorable and eloquent passage, which reads:
“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.”
The first recorded 'candy stick' comes from 1837 at an exhibition in Massachusetts in the USA. They started as straight white sugar sticks and a few years later the red stripes were added. The first time they are documented as being called 'candy canes' comes in 1866; and their first connection to Christmas comes from 1874. Early recipes had them as simply 'sugar' flavored. But we're now used to them being flavored with peppermint or wintergreen.
Around 1920, Bob McCormack, from Georgia, USA, started making canes for his friends and family. They became more and more popular and he started his own business called Bob's Candies. Bob McCormack's brother-in-law, Gregory Harding Keller, who was a Catholic priest, invented the 'Keller Machine' that made turning straight candy sticks into curved candy canes automatically! In 2005, Bob's Candies was bought by Farley and Sathers but they still make candy canes!
Thank you for reading Thursday Things! I’ll see you next Thursday as we ring in the new year. Finally.