Si, Chiquita, there is a Santa Claus

An Old Pueblo Classic revisited

Chiquita Maria Pinkerton

In 1893 Eight-year-old Chiquita Maria Pinkerton wrote a letter to the editor of the Tombstone Epitaph.

The famous answer to Chiquita’s letter, written by the editor, Pincus T. Flywheel, became the holiday season’s most reprinted editorial west of the San Pedro.

Why?

Because editorial writers like to take Christmas off. We’d happily reprint a 2-thousand year old “Bethlehem Daily Bugle” front-page editorial encouraging the inn keepers of Judea to welcome all travelers -- if it meant we could stay home and sleep off a Christmas party hangover.

Here then, dear reader, is the famous letter:

Dear Editor:
     I am 8. Mis amigos say there is no Santy Claus. Please tell me the truth. Is there a Santy Claus?
     Yours,
     Chiquita Maria Rodriguez
     Jingle Spurs Ranch
     Arizona Territory

Chiquita, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age ruled over by skeptical skeptics. Your little friends only believe what they see. They believe only what they can comprehend with their little minds.

Chiquita, you will find most minds are little. Very little. Take our copy editor, Mingus “Three Fingers” Kippleton, for example. Brain the size of a chestnut. Couldn’t edit a tombstone for the life of him.

In this great universe of ours, man is but a mere puny, sniveling, insignificant, trifling, pathetic ant with his tiny intellect! The infinite world, as described by our town’s philosopher, and one-eyed barkeep, Festus McDiggle, is “bigger than all tarnation.” If you had any idea how danged big a tarnation is you’d know that’s big, Chiquita. Man does not have the intelligence to grasp the whole of knowledge! And, alas, too often, he has no idea where to recycle his Christmas Tree let alone just how cotton picking big a tarnation is.

Yes, Chiquita, there is a Santa Claus. How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! Why life wouldn’t be worth a spittoon of warm Gila monster spit. It would be as dreary as if there were no OK Corral shootouts or sarsaparilla or Gene Autry westerns. There would be no childlike faith, no cowboy poetry, or no romance to make this existence tolerable. And dear readers, if your existence has become intolerable I recommend a “special” eggnog served by our sponsor, Madam Kitty Wyler, of “Miss Wyler’s House of Soiled Doves” down by the Birdcage Theater.

And when you mosey on down tell Miss Kitty Wyler that Pincus T. Flywheel of the Epitaph sent you.

Santa Claus

Not believe in Santa Claus?! You might as well not believe in chupacabras. Did you ever see a chupacabra dancing out on your veranda? Of course not, but that's no proof they ain’t there. What’s not there is a veranda. This here is a desert, dagnabbit!

Chiquita, you might get your papa to hire some cowhands to watch all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if not a single one of them shiftless cowpokes didn’t see the jolly old elf what would that prove? Only that desperate flat broke cowpokes will do anything for two bits on Christmas eve--including sitting on a buckboard, freezing their chaps off outside somebody’s hacienda, watching a danged chimney all night!

The most real things in this here world are those mysterious unseen things that men cannot see. Which is why, my young friend, menfolk annoy women so much.

How many times have you heard your mama say to your papa,”Tarnation, Tex! I done seen something unbelievable.”

And he just scratches his chin and says he didn’t see a danged thing.

And she calls him a dagnabbed fool.

And your papa will say to your mama, “Okay, woman, what in blazes did you see?”

And as sure as javelina stink she’ll say “If you have to ask, you varmint,—I’m not telling you.”

Nobody can imagine all the amazing wonders there are to see in this great big world. Myself, I’ve seen amazing things and that’s generally after a shot of Rye cider down at the Silver Spur Saloon.

Chiquita, there are unseen wonders all around us. Only with faith, love and a swift kick in the head from a backwoods burro can we see the supernatural beyond the next arroyo.

If you ain’t nowhere near a backwoods burro stick with faith and love, Chiquita, if you want to take a gander at the miraculous.

Is Santa real? In all this world there is nothing else as real and as enduring as Santa Claus. Except maybe fruitcake. That dad-gummed stuff is harder than adobe and half as tasty. If the Spaniards built their missions with fruitcake bricks they’d all still be standing. Is Santa real? Is Boot Hill a tourist trap? Holy jalapeños, Chiquita! Santa lives! And he lives forever.

No Santa Claus!? Chiquita, a thousand years from now, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, rest assured on Christmas Eve that varmint Santa Claus will come flying in across the prairie moon on his buckboard, pulled by eight javelina and he’ll drop down every chiminea in every pueblo old west and I guarantee you the old elf will continue to make glad the hearts of good little niños and niñas everywhere.

Merry Christmas, Chiquita, y Feliz Navidad, mija.

Pincus T. Flywheel
Editor
Tombstone Epitaph