In previous posts, I’ve wrote about the different holidays celebrated around your planet and how we — as credit union mortgage lenders — are a lot like Santa’s helpers. But instead of building toys and getting children excited about seeing good ol’ St. Nick, we’re delivering peace of mind to our members by helping them “build” their mortgage applications with the goal of delivering the gift of homeownership along with the support and expertise you provide as the servicer of their loans.
Since I’ve landed on Earth and became a member of the myCUmortgage family, I’ve witnessed a great tradition started by the former President and CEO of our parent organization, Wright-Patt Credit Union. Doug Fecher was a guiding and supportive force behind myCUmortgage since our inception 21 years ago. For that, we can’t thank Doug enough!
Each year around this time, Doug would send all of the credit union’s employee partners and myCUmortgage experts a copy of The (New York) Sun article that ran September 21, 1897. This article features a letter by a young lady named Virginia who asks the editor if there is really a Santa Claus.
The response, in my humble alien opinion, easily relates to the credit union mortgage lending industry and the belief, hope and joy we strive to deliver to members throughout the mortgage process and throughout the life of their loans. Just as Virginia wants reassurance that there’s a Santa Claus, our members look to us to reassure them that homeownership is very much possible through you and your credit union.
Please, take a moment to read the letter and article below. Even if you’ve read it many times before, it’s as certain as the phases of the three moons on my home planet of Amicitia that it will remind you of why we all got into this wonderful business of helping our members with their goal of homeownership. Enjoy!
———
Dear Editor:
I am eight years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West 95th Street
Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
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 external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus?! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but there’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You may tear apart the baby’s rattle to 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, can 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 he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the hearts of childhood.