Skip to content
Project 2025
Search

Latest Stories

Follow Us:
Top Stories
People walking down the steps of the U.S. capitol.

DNC's Proposed RCV Ban Sparks Debate Over 2028 Presidential Primaries

Francesca Hong Gains Momentum in Wisconsin Democratic Governor’s Race

Francesca Hong Gains Momentum in Wisconsin Democratic Governor’s Race

A Senior Man Using A Laptop Computer And Paying Bills With Nurse

Not All Change Is Good: Medicaid, Medicare Shifts Are Everyone’s Problem

Military education. Student in soldier uniform learning at wooden table indoors, selective focus

You Shouldn't Have to Go To War to Go To College

Close-up hands of unrecognizable man holding and using smartphone standing on city street, browsing internet, checking social media, using mobile application.

ALS Doesn't Wait. Our Health Care System Still Does.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus – and a future for the U.S.

Santa Claus holding an American flag
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus – and so much more
inhauscreative/Getty Images
Amy Lockard
By Amy LockardDec 25, 2024
Amy Lockard

Amy Lockard has a Master’s Degree in English Literature from the University of Northern Iowa (1994)

and has continued classes at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She has published several short stories, and poetry. She regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals, combining her background in literature with commentary on modern politics and social issues. Currently she is working on the second of a four book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice." 

See More Writings by author

Yes, Virginia … and our other 49 states, there is, and will continue to be, a United States of America.

In history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial, written to the editor of the New York Sun in 1897, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon asked for a definitive answer as to whether there is, or is not, a Santa Claus.

Behind Virginia’s letter is a concept we are all too likely to forget in these fraught times. Although she is questioning the existence of a mythical figure, underlying her question is a basic premise with powerful political acumen. It has to do with the spirit of humanity and, when applied to our country, the spirit of our nation.

There are ample issues for disagreement and dissension in the United States, intensified by a political system embracing extremes. Human rights debates, racial equality, gun legislation or the lack thereof, abortion debate, how our children are taught, even how we define an individual — all fodder for argument.

Reeling from our recent election, half our electorate is jubilant with victory, half despondent in defeat. And there is no end to the arguments: controversy over our country’s leadership role in the world, questions about the integrity of our institutions and lawmakers, apprehension about the future, etc. The right veering further right, the left holding desperately to the left. And everybody absolutely believes he or she, or they, are RIGHT!

We have all been affected by the “skepticism of a skeptical age.” (New York Sun)

But Santa Claus and the United States have more in common than at first glance. That “jolly old elf” and our nation both started as a dream, the embodiment of an idea. And both are sustained by that dream. They may have morphed into skinny mall Santa or been corrupted by contentious claims of “this land is my land and only mine,” but both exist through our belief in them. As Virginia wondered about Santa over a century ago, this holiday season many are wondering and worried about our country.

Yet the core of the United States is something more intangible than its Constitution and laws. Its strength is in the underlying belief in it.

We all love stories. Always, the “story behind the story” involves immersing ourselves in the power of belief.

So, who brings the holiday gifts?

Is it not more important simply to recognize those gifts? Not just our own, but the whole array our families and communities possess by virtue of our U. S. citizenship. How much better than arguing, to abide by that most old-fashioned of sentiments and believe we are “blessed” to live in this country.

Santa Claus and our nation also have this in common. No matter how many letters we send to the North Pole or how many expletives we spew about what is wrong with the U.S., neither acts as Amazon’s Wish Fulfillment Center on steroids. Getting everything we want under the tree is impossible, as impossible as pleasing all of the people all of the time in our vast and diverse country.

Francis Pharcellus Church, the veteran newsman at the Sun, in answering Virginia’s letter, wrote: “there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man … could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance … push aside that curtain … to the beauty and glory beyond.”

Don’t we all love patriotic anthems and holiday carols for their hopeful message of belief in something bigger, whether it is our country or Santa Claus or God? The strength of our nation is not embodied in its headlines and “breaking news.” It is in the hearts of its people. Which is exactly what Church wrote, assuring Virginia of the truth of her belief: “In all this world there is nothing else so real and abiding.”

So, what’s wrong with the United States? Plenty.

But, what’s right with it? Plenty more.

In this season of miracles, let us choose to believe in ourselves.

Lockard is an Iowa resident who regularly contributes to regional newspapers and periodicals. She is working on the second of a four-book fictional series based on Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice."

Every year at this time we publish stories that reflect themes and messages of the holiday season. These stories have resonated deeply with our audience in the past perhaps because they contain universal messages that are central to the holiday spirit; messages of love, kindness, hope, generosity that are universal values to peoples of all cultures and backgrounds.

This season we are re-running some popular holiday messages from the past. We hope you enjoyed this update from 2023 as you celebrate this holiday season with family and friends.

All of the staff at The Fulcrum wish you the best this holiday season and hope for peace on Earth and good to all for 2025.


Latest news

Peace and Friendship Handshake During Mass in St Mary's Roman Catholic Church
Democracy

Calling all Peacemakers and Children of God

Artificial intelligence chip, AI processor, Backgrounds 3D rendered image.
Media & Technology

Can Congress Govern Disruptive Technology?

Lawmakers Push for Immigrant Woman’s Release and Medical Records After Suspected Miscarriage
Rule of Law

Lawmakers Push for Immigrant Woman’s Release and Medical Records After Suspected Miscarriage

Read More

Voter receives a pen from poll worker at polling station.

A civic petition calling for constitutional restraint, civil discourse, bipartisan cooperation, and equal justice to strengthen American democracy and national unity.

SDI Productions/Getty Images

A Contemporary Olive Branch Petition

To the President of the United States, the Leaders of the Congress, and Our Fellow Americans Entrusted with the Powers of Government:

When, in the ordinary course of a free republic, disagreements arise among citizens concerning the proper exercise of power, it is neither unusual nor dishonorable that earnest convictions should differ. Such diversity has long been the strength of our nation, for liberty has never depended upon unanimity of opinion, but upon mutual respect under a common Constitution.

Keep ReadingShow less
Close-up shot of a Black woman's hands receiving a mail-in ballot to vote in a USA Presidential, Senatorial, Congressional, or local election

Federal investigators spent eight months reviewing the Allied Pilots Association election, examining ballot secrecy, observer rights, election records and transparency before allowing the results to stand.

Jeremy Poland/Getty Images

What a Federal Investigation of a Union Election Can Teach Us About Democratic Trust

For eight months, federal investigators examined allegations involving ballot secrecy, observer rights, election records and reporting procedures in a contested union election before allowing the result to stand.

Following a disputed election within the Allied Pilots Association (APA), complaints led to a formal review by the U.S. Department of Labor's Office of Labor-Management Standards. Investigators spent months going through election records, audit logs, witness testimony and technical documentation before reaching their conclusion.

Keep ReadingShow less
50501 Movement – Thomas Paine’s Political Philosophy in the 21st Century

circa 1770: The English-born American revolutionary philosopher Thomas Paine, (1737 - 1809), who wrote and published 'The Rights of Man', (1791 - 1792), in England. In it he expressed his support for the French Revolution and called for the overthrow of the British monarchy.

(Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

50501 Movement – Thomas Paine’s Political Philosophy in the 21st Century

The 50501 Movement can be viewed as a 21st-century manifestation of the anti-authoritarian, pro-egalitarian framework that Thomas Paine championed in Common Sense. Both movements share a core belief in challenging entrenched power and mobilizing the collective voice of everyday people to defend democracy. By utilizing decentralized, nationwide grassroots mobilization to challenge executive overreach and billionaire consolidation, the 50501 movement directly echoes Paine’s anti-authoritarianism, his belief in collective civic power, and his demand that power remains in the hands of the people.

The 50501 Movement mirrors the spirit of Paine’s Common Sense through three primary parallels:

Keep ReadingShow less
Creative Images & Video Creative Images & Video Images Creative Editorial Video Creative Editorial Search by image or video I Voted Today paper sticker on mans finger on rustic wooden table

How class, identity, and political recognition shaped the Democratic Party's relationship with rural white working-class voters over two decades.

BackyardProduction/Getty Images

The Thousand Injuries: The Not-Qwhite Voter and the Politics of Recognition

In the fall of 2003, Howard Dean said he wanted to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in the back windows of their pickup trucks. It was clumsy but not dishonest. He meant that his party had written off a whole category of American voter and wanted to change that. He was attacked at once, mostly by his own side, and walked it back within forty-eight hours. The lesson his party drew was not that the outreach had been badly phrased; It was that the outreach itself was impermissible, that to pursue the rural white working class voter was to be complicit with everything he was presumed to represent. Dean was the last major Democrat to try, and the consequences have accumulated in the shape of the electoral map.

Edgar Allan Poe understood something the party still does not. "The Cask of Amontillado" opens with a line that ought to hang in every campaign office: the thousand injuries of Fortunato the narrator had borne as best he could, but when Fortunato ventured upon insult, he vowed revenge. Injuries can be borne as long as the injured man believes his tormentors still regard his suffering as real. The insult is different. It reframes the injuries as deserved, telling the sufferer he is the kind of person who deserves to suffer. Poe's narrator does not recalculate his interests; he takes his revenge at great cost to himself. That is not irrational but human, and it is the most precise framework we have for what has happened to rural white working-class voters over the last twenty years.

Keep ReadingShow less
© Copyright 2026