The tale of Tír Na nÓg – the land of eternal youth Patrick Lynch
Tír Na nÓg, a paradise and supernatural realm of everlasting youth, beauty, health, abundance, and joy.
Once upon a time, many years ago, there lived a great warrior named Oisín, son of legendary Fionn Mac Cumhaill, or Finn MacCool in its English form. MacCool was the leader of Fianna – a group of great protectors who guarded the High King of Ireland –, and each day Oisín and Fianna explored the beautiful green hills of Ireland as they hunted the land.
One day, Oisín and Fianna saw a beautiful white horse in the distance, and on its back was the most beautiful young woman they had ever seen. Her hair was the color of the sun and fell to her waist, and she wore a dress of palest blue studded with stars. A golden light surrounded her.
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As the beautiful woman and her horse drew nearer, all men stopped in their tracks, waiting to hear what she had to say. “My name is Niamh,” said the golden-haired maiden, “my father is King of the mystical land of Tír Na nÓg, a land that knows no sorrow and where nobody ever ages. I have heard wonderful things about a great warrior named Oisín, and I have come to take him with me back to the Land of Eternal Youth.”
Oisín immediately fell in love with Niamh, and although he was sad to be leaving his father and the Fianna, he agreed to ride with Niamh to Tír na nÓg, promising Finn Mac Cumhaill that he would return to Ireland to see him again soon.
The fine white horse galloped across silver seas into the magical land of Tír Na nÓg. As Niamh had promised, this was a land where nobody knew of sadness, and where nobody ever aged; everyone there lived forever.
Together, Niamh and Oisín spent many happy times together, although there was a small part of Oisín’s heart that was lonely. He missed his homeland, Ireland, and longed to see his father and Fianna again.
Oisín begged Niamh to let him return to Ireland, but she was reluctant. Although Oisín thought that only a few years had passed, it had been 300 years back in Ireland, since time slowed down in the land of Tír Na nÓg.
Eventually, Niamh saw how much Oisín missed his family. She agreed to let him return to Ireland to see them again. “Take my magical white horse,” she told him. “Do not get off this horse, and do not let your feet touch the ground, or else you will never be able to return to Tír Na nÓg again.”
Oisín set off across the seas on Niamh’s white horse and arrived in Ireland. When he got there, he could see that things had changed. The Fianna no longer hunted green hills, and the grand castle that once housed his family was crumbling and covered in ivy.
As he searched for someone familiar in the green hills, Oisín came across some old men who were struggling to move a huge rock. He leaned down from his horse to help them, but in doing so, he lost his balance and fell from the horse. The moment Oisín touched Irish soil, he immediately aged 300 years for the time he had missed in Ireland.
An old, frail man, he asked the men he had stopped to help about his father Finn MacCool, and they told him that Finn had died many years before. Broken-hearted and many hundred years old, Oisín died soon after, but not before he shared legends and stories of Fianna, his father, great Finn MacCool, and the magical land of eternal youth that is Tír Na nÓg. And even today in Ireland, these legends live on.
In her childhood, Virginia O’Hanlon penned a letter that would prove that meeting Santa is not the only way to determine if he is real. Her story even became a movie!
Sheila Langan
@SheiLangan
Dec 25, 2025
One September evening in 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon tearfully asked her father, \”Is Santa real?\”One September evening in 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon tearfully asked her father, “Is Santa real?” Getty
As a child, Virginia O’Hanlon wrote a letter that would prove that meeting Santa is not the only way to determine whether he is real. Her story even became a movie!
It’s the heavy question most of us come to at some point in our lives. After years of writing letters, leaving cookies out on Christmas Eve, and blissfully ignoring the sounds of last-minute wrapping paper echoing down the hallway early Christmas morning:
“Is Santa Claus real?”
One September evening in 1897, eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon tearfully asked her father this very question when he arrived home from work at their apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
Dr. Philip O’Hanlon’s answer was innovative, creative, and, perhaps, a way of buying himself some time: He told her to send her question to the New York Sun newspaper.
The next day, Virginia sent the following letter to the editor of the Sun:
Dear Editor,
I am 8 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
119 w. 95th Street
The Sun replied on the editorial page of its September 21, 1897, edition. The response was not prominently featured; it ran in the seventh slot on the page, below editorials on local and state politics and even a piece about the recently invented chainless bicycle.
Nevertheless, it captured the hearts of New York City and would go on to become a Christmas letter for the ages.
Virginia,
Your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except that which 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 countless 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 eternal 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 have men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that 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 that’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 tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which the strongest men, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernatural 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 lives forever.
A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
The Sun had a strict policy of not revealing its editorial writers, so it wasn’t until his death in 1906 that Francis Pharcellus Church became known as the author.
The letter becomes all the more moving after his identity is known. As a battlefield correspondent for the New York Times during the American Civil War, he had seen more than his share of suffering and strife. He went on to found the Army and Navy Magazine and Galaxy Magazine with his brother, William Conant Church. The latter later merged with Atlantic Monthly, and Francis became a lead editorial writer for The Sun.
According to his editor at the time, Edward P. Mitchell, Church did not leap to the task when Virginia’s letter came in. “At first he bristled and pooh-poohed the subject,” Mitchell later wrote, “but he took the letter and turned with an air of resignation to his desk.”
His response went down in history. It has been the subject of TV specials, cartoons, cantatas, and Christmas window displays.
As for Virginia, her full name was Laura Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas. She wed a man named Edward Douglas in 1910, but he deserted her just before their daughter Laura was born. This did not hold Virginia back whatsoever. She powered on to earn her degree from Hunter College, a Master’s in education from Columbia University, and her doctorate from Fordham. She was a New York City school teacher for over 20 years and eventually became principal before retiring in 1959.
Throughout her life, she continued to receive mail about the letter and responded diligently. She even had a specially printed copy of the editorial, which she included in all of her replies.
One of her letters, written when she herself was grown and published on the 40th anniversary of Church’s editorial, read:
“Is there a Santa Claus?’
Dear children of yesterday and today, when that question was asked, I, a little girl, was interested in finding out the answer just for myself. Now, grown up and a teacher, I want so much that all little children believe there really is a Santa Claus. For I understand how essential a belief in Santa Claus, and in fairies, too, is to a happy childhood.
Some little children doubt that Santa still lives because often their letters, for one reason or another, never seem to reach him. Nurses in hospitals know who some of these children are. Teachers in great city schools know others.
Dear children of yesterday, won’t you try to seek out these trusting children of today and make sure that their letters in some way may reach Santa Claus so that ‘he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood’? That, I believe, is the best way of proving there is a Santa Claus, for ourselves and for the children.
O’Hanlon died in 1971 at the age of 81, in a nursing home in upstate New York. Her legacy lives on and on.
Chris Donnelly: Amidst the darkness and hate, here’s to hope and a better 2026.
In the words of the 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
People carrying bags and boxes of food and humanitarian aid that was unloaded from a World Food Programme convoy that had been heading to Gaza City in the northern Gaza Strip
By Chris Donnelly
December 19, 2025 at 6:00am GMT
With less than two weeks left of the Year of our Lord 2025, it seems appropriate to reflect on the 50 that have come and gone since the apple fell and fireworks lit up the sky to mark the new year.
The late Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee Year, themed ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, but on the international stage, darkness continues to crowd out both hope and light.
The brutal genocidal campaign waged by Israel against the Gazan population led to more than 60,000 being killed in a vicious two-year onslaught. The truce that came into effect in October has not prevented Israel from killing almost 400 Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire.
Peace and justice will continue to be cruelly denied the Palestinian people, just as it was for generations prior to October 7, 2023.
Violence against Christians in Nigeria and the Sahel region of Africa by Islamic extremists has led to thousands being killed and village communities destroyed, illustrating how intolerance of minority faith communities is a worryingly persistent theme across the globe, as the Bondi Beach atrocity demonstrated.
This was a year in which the Nobel Peace Prize was sullied (not for the first time) by being given to Maria Corina Machado.
The US government is breaking international law by killing people off the coast of Venezuela and is shamelessly engaged in an attempt to overthrow a government to put in place a new regime that will be more amenable to serving its interest, ie: stealing Venezuela’s oil.
That has been the American way since the Monroe Doctrine two centuries ago threatened European nations away from the Americas as the US declared there was to be only one bully in its back yard.
Perhaps Vladimir should have declared a Putin Doctrine to justify military intervention in Ukraine, if only to expose the utter hypocrisy of it all.
FIFA, world football’s governing body, debased the sport by creating a peace award for the sole purpose of giving it to Donald Trump at the draw for the 2026 tournament scheduled for next summer in the States.
Many who would have considered attending that event will have several reasons to think twice.
The extortionate price of game tickets – even after organisers made a concession for a token number to be sold at reasonable prices – aside, there is also the small matter of the condition being considered for all foreign visitors to provide five years of social media history, clearly implying those who may be deemed to have been vocally critical of American leaders could be denied entry.
It’s a million miles away from the message delivered by US Vice President JD Vance during his visit to Munich last February, when he lectured Europeans about how they have abandoned free speech.
But then, consistency has never been the trademark of the unhinged right.
The land of the free and home of the brave continues to be led by a government – and political class – that cheerleads the Gaza genocide, gaslighting millions of its own citizens and others across the globe by smearing with the antisemite label anyone who would dare to raise their voice against the slaughter.
The President’s utterances compete on a daily basis with his actions when determining which is more outlandish.
When he’s not joking about “signing the rights of the Golan Heights” to Israel and wanting a cut of the profit Israel stands to make, he’s threatening a democratically elected government in Venezuela, denigrating and demonising people living in the poorest countries in the world, and mocking the tragic killing of a celebrated Hollywood personality and his wife at the hands of their own troubled son.
Spare a thought for those self-proclaimed people of faith obliged to perform mental contortions on a daily basis when squaring their beliefs with their professed undying love and fealty to President Trump.
Meanwhile, in Britain, the message from the new chief spook at MI6, Blaise Metreweli, is that “the frontline is everywhere” in the battle with Russia, as she starkly declared that “it will be our rediscovery of our shared humanity, our ability to listen, and our courage that will determine how our future unfolds”.
The British government has remained resolute in its support of Israel throughout the genocidal campaign in Gaza, just as it remains faithful to the American administration bullying smaller nations in the Americas. In Ireland, we know only too well of the conduct of Britain’s intelligence community.
Never mind rediscovering it, their vision of a shared humanity is one which should remain forever buried.
The message from the top in our rights-based western world order is that we must hate the Russians because they are coming for us. Even the residents of sleepy Fivemiletown are not safe. Don’t you know they even fly drones over Dublin?
Hate the Chinese too, because those people simply aren’t to be trusted – just please don’t waste your time reading about the Opium Wars. Staying ignorant is an essential part of their plan.
Hate the Muslims as well, except for the very wealthy ones whose financial footprints are all over London.
Amidst the gloom, hope can still be found.
It is in the bravery and defiance of the Palestinian rights protestors, raising their voices in determination and ignoring the shameless gaslighting from officialdom.
It is in the volunteers who work in the People’s Kitchen in Belfast amongst the city’s homeless, giving their time to those on the margins for whom despair is the overwhelming emotion.
It is present on the stages of the nativity plays being performed by our youngest school kids in front of their loving parents and grandparents.
It is in the beautiful jubilee ‘Pilgrims of Hope’ logo which symbolises global solidarity, faith and resilience on a cross-shaped anchor amidst the turbulent sea of today’s world.
In the words of the 19th century abolitionist Theodore Parker, made popular by Martin Luther King Jr, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”
Here’s to a better 2026.
If you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article and would like to submit a Letter to the Editor to be considered for publication
2 Timothy 4:7 states, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” This verse reflects Paul’s declaration of faithfulness and perseverance in his service to Christ, emphasizing the importance of remaining steadfast in the face of challenges. It serves as a timeless reminder for believers to continue their spiritual journey with dedication and commitment, especially as Paul wrote this during his final days before martyrdom. Overall, it encapsulates the essence of the Christian journey—a noble struggle and unwavering commitment to faith.
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said the ruling on Wednesday had ‘wide-ranging implications’.
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn has welcomed a Supreme Court ruling on a Troubles case
By Jonathan McCambridge, Press Association
December 17, 2025 at 1:49pm GMT
The Government has said it will consider how a Supreme Court ruling over a Troubles death is relevant to calls for it to reveal the identity of the agent Stakeknife.
Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn said the ruling on Wednesday had “wide-ranging implications”.
The final Operation Kenova report last week urged the Government to name Stakeknife, who operated as an Army spy within the IRA during the Troubles.
Mr Benn said at the time he would respond after the Supreme Court ruled in a government appeal over a coroner’s decision to disclose some sensitive material in the inquest into a 1994 murder in Belfast.
The court has now ruled that the coroner should not release the information around the murder of Liam Paul Thompson in Belfast in 1994, and said the responsibility lies with the Northern Ireland Secretary over assessing risks to national security.
Mr Benn said: “The Government welcomes the unanimous judgment handed down by the Supreme Court.
“This is a highly complex case with wide-ranging implications.
“The Government will therefore take time to fully consider all aspects of this judgment, including those relevant to the request made by Operation Kenova for the Government to name Stakeknife.
“I will return to the House on this as soon as the Government has come to a final view.”
Last week’s Kenova report looked at the actions of Stakeknife, the Army’s top spy in the Provisional IRA’s internal security unit during the Troubles.
The agent has been linked to at least 14 murders and 15 abductions.
He was widely believed to be west Belfast man Freddie Scappaticci, who was 77 when he died in 2023.
The Kenova report also called for the UK Government to publicly reveal the identity of Stakeknife.
The Government has resisted previous calls to do this, arguing that departing from its policy of Neither Confirm Nor Deny (NCND) in regard to officially confirming the identity of agents would have implications for national security.
In his judgment in the Thompson case, Lord Stephens said one of the issues for the coroner to consider had been the fact that the Ministry of Defence and PSNI held documents which were relevant to the issue of whether the security forces had received information from a covert human intelligence source in connection with the death.
He said the Government considered that “disclosing those documents would be contrary to the public interest in protecting national security, in particular because it would be contrary to the policy of neither confirming nor denying the use of informers or other secret source”.
