There is a famous newspaper editorial, from the 1890s, where the editor tells a little girl named Virginia, "Yes, Virginia,There Is A Santa Claus."
Here is a parody, closely following the original Santa Claus letter, but replaced by "Bill W." It's from the 1990s. (In fact, the original 1897 is updated to 1997].
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YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A BILL W
Until we are seven or eight years sober, we believe in Bill W. Then, many begin to believe they are now grown-ups, and to have their doubts. One winter day in 1997, a New York AA, Virginia O'H., asked her sponsor whether there was really a Bill W.
As she recalled many years later, her sponsor wavered, and then Virginia hit upon the answer herself. "If you read it in the Grapevine, it's true", they had often said, and little Virginia wrote this oft-reprinted letter:
Dear Editor:
I am 8 years sober. Some of my little AA friends say there is no Bill W. My sponsor says, "If you read it in the Grapevine, it's true". Please tell me the truth. Is there a Bill W? Virginia O'H.
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Her little letter found its way into the hands of a senior editor of the Grapevine. His reply caused an immediate sensation, and has been reprinted countless times in local newsletters all over the world.
Here it is:
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism 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 sponsors or sponsees, are little, compared with the boundless miracles of sobriety around us.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Bill W. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and coffee exist, and you know that they abound. Alas, how dreary sobriety would be if there were no Bill W!
As dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. The light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Bill W! You might as well not believe in a higher power! You might get your sponsor to have big book nazis watch all the meetings on Christmas eve, but even then, if you did not see Bill W. in a corner, what would that prove? The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor sponsors can see.
You can tear apart a baby's rattle to see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the Steps and the Higher Power that not even the united strength of all the sponsors in the world can tear away. Only faith, love, romance, can push aside that curtain, one day at a time. Ah, Virginia, there is nothing in the world, so real and abiding. No Bill W! Thank god, he lives, and a thousand years from now, will continue to make glad the hearts of newcomers.
THE EDITOR.
