Yes, Virginia...

“May the father of all mercies scatter light, and not darkness, upon our paths, and make us in all our several vocations useful here, and in His own due time and way everlastingly happy.” —George Washington (1790)
A few years ago, syndicated columnists were surveyed on the question of the best newspaper columns ever written. The winner was Ernie Pyle’s “The Death of Captain Waskow,” written in January 1944. Pyle was World War II’s “G.I. Journalist,” and 15 months after publishing that column, he was killed while covering the Army’s 305th Infantry Regiment landing at Iejima, near Okinawa.

Notably, those columnists agreed that the second-best column ever written was a response to a letter from a child. That 1897 column was written by Francis Church and originally published in The Sun, New York’s most prominent newspaper at the time. Church’s reply is not only one of the best columns ever but, indisputably, the most republished column ever — and it’s appropriate that a timeless column about Christmas would hold this distinction.